Thistle Foundation supports people with long-term health conditions. With its IT equipment reaching the end of its lifecycle and the organisation preparing for a move to a purpose-built new building in April, Thistle took the opportunity to update its IT infrastructure. The organisation investigated on-premise options which involved replacing its existing servers, and hosted solutions.
“The downside of simply replacing our servers was cost,” says Scott Moncrieff, IT manager, Thistle Foundation. “We also spend a lot of our time taking care of updates and maintenance, always outside business hours so as not to disrupt operations. So we looked at finding a hosting partner as an alternative, someone to take care of the management and maintenance of the equipment for us. Ultimately we chose the hosting route because, in addition to being more cost-efficient, it frees up our small IT team to focus more effectively on day-to-day tasks and projects.”
In addition, the level of redundancy that Pulsant offers in terms of networking connectivity and power provision means that Thistle’s large contingent of mobile care workers will have uninterrupted access to the organisation’s systems wherever they are.
“We selected Pulsant based on the solution they offered, its cost efficiency and because of their location. Our account manager and technical contact are based in Edinburgh which gives us added confidence when seeking advice or if we run into any issues.”
Ian Appleyard, Pulsant client manager, says: “Pulsant has a lot of experience in delivering cloud and managed hosting solutions to organisations in the charity and not-for-profit markets, so we understand the challenges they face and recognise that their requirements will be unique and linked to their overall objectives. We’re also focused on advising our clients on the best ways forward in order to meet these objectives; it’s never about simply agreeing but more about offering a truly consultative approach.”
The company is currently assisting Thistle in the migration of its systems to Pulsant’s Enterprise Cloud platform.
“The Pulsant team has been excellent in terms of the support and advice they’ve offered us. And along with the solution that’s being delivered and the redundancy they’ve built into their systems, we’re confident that we’ll soon be enjoying the benefits of working with a partner like Pulsant,” concludes Moncrieff.
