PAV customers> The Westminster Society

Charity cuts its costs with new voice and data network.

Business Background
The Westminster Society is a charity based in Queens Park, London which promotes new opportunities for people with learning disabilities and for their families. The Society’s activities include Housing, Children’s’ Services, Family Support, Leisure and Education, Outreach and Drop-In services. The charity has no dedicated IT department and is run from a main office with two smaller, subsidiary offices nearby.

Requirement – Reduce telephone bills and network administration costs
We were asked to help to reduce administration costs by expanding our existing CITRIX installation in the main office to include the two smaller offices. This would allow them to run thin clients and so come under the same administrative umbrella. We were also asked to help in reducing their telephone costs as each site had multiple telephone lines – a system that was proving to be expensive.

PAV Solution
We connected the three sites via BT LES (LAN Extention Service) circuits, giving a 10Mb bandwidth for data connection and voice traffic. We installed a 3COM NBX telephone system, and all the necessary CAT5e cabling, in the main office to operate via a single switch, so that all the telephones on all three sites worked as extensions of that one switch. The installation also included an extra, load balanced CITRIX server to provide remote access to all users at their other sites.

Outcome
Westminster’s telephone bills have been reduced because all calls made between the three offices are now free, eliminating not only all internal call charges, but line rental for the multiple individual lines. The new structure also allows a single internet connection from the main office to PAV, allowing us to manage the whole enterprise remotely.

Most importantly this solution has led to increased efficiency in terms of administration time on the network.