Assist Ltd transform UK wide work for Dogs Trust

Sept. 28, 2011 - PRLog -- The Dogs Trust mission is to bring about the day when all dogs can enjoy a happy life, free from the threat of unnecessary destruction. The charity, founded in 1891 (formerly the National Canine Defence League), requires a highly structured and effective IT support system to support its outreach programs, educational work, information, rehoming of dogs, legislation, and campaigning.

Assist Ltd started working with the Dogs Trust in December 2010. The Trust has a network of 17 Rehoming Centres around the country and many remote users, for whom it is essential to have fast and secure access to information such as medical records and rehoming information for the dogs in their care. The support that Assist Ltd provided with Citrix Xenapp enabled the Dogs Trust remote and satellite location users to access their core applications securely.  Remote workers access the main patient system “Host”, which holds all the data for the dogs as well as Microsoft office and other back office systems.

Ross Bentley, Technical Director at Assist Ltd:

“In addition we virtualised the current physical servers and implemented shared storage in the form of Datacore, making the environment more accessible and resilient. This provided the Dogs Trust with a more flexible and scalable backend infrastructure that could cope with business growth, and the addition of more re-homing centres throughout the UK. We also reduced cost by consolidating the physical servers using Xenserver”.

Assist then investigated the remote access infrastructure and recommended that Dogs Trust implement a more enterprise class solution so that users at their re-homing centres and remote workers around the country could access their core applications from anywhere securely.

The remote access infrastructure also provides a disaster recovery plan. Should a physical or manmade disaster occur workers would still have access to their core data and applications from home.

Bernie Burdett, head of IT at Dogs Trust:

“Choosing the right solution for the Charity was absolutely crucial. We needed a scalable, resilient and affordable solution that would enable us to grow organically and embrace new and emerging technologies. Citrix's Xenapp and Xenserver technology has played a critical role in helping Dogs Trust achieving this goal. As crucial was the service we received from Assist Ltd, we certainly wouldn't have got to this stage so quickly or efficiently without the valuable knowledge and professionalism of the guys at Assist.”

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Assist is an independent solutions integrator specialising in creating Desktop and Application Delivery Strategies for both private and public sector companies.