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Enterprise Overview
Industry: Risk Management
Size: SME, 120
Revenue: Unpublished
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Quote
"The system meets the specification we agreed with you, is working well and gives us the prospect of a robust operation into the future at reduced operating costs because of the Open Source approach."
Les Hampson, Managing Director, ESR Technology
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What is ESR Technology?
www.esrtechnology.com
ESR Technology (ESRT) specialise in providing risk assessment services to the aviation, utilities, space, defence and petrochemical industries.
Business Situation
ESRT were bought along with a portfolio of companies from AEA Technology Plc in October 2005 by Coller Capital. From the date of divestment ESRT had six months to identify, design & cost, construct and deploy a complete server-side infrastructure to support over 100 users distributed across 6 locations throughout the UK and the Middle East.
Although the incumbent IT supplier provided a "full service" solution they were particularly unhappy with their unresponsive technical support and the inflexible contract terms and conditions. As their business grew they knew that these costs and poor service would worsen. Therefore they looked for an alternative solution that would save money, scale with their ambitions for growth and, crucially, enable their management team to take control of their IT strategy moving forward.
The Solution
ESRT replaced their entire network infrastructure with free, open source software due to the following factors:
- Improved network stability
- Immunity to Windows viruses
- Its ability to interoperate with MS Windows desktops including group calendaring with MS Outlook
- Scalability without licensing costs.
VC investment in ESR Technology has already resulted in rapid business expansion. With open source they won't be penalised for this growth because there are no additional costs in software licensing. They will only have to pay for additional copies of Windows on desktop PCs.
Whilst they use an external open source services provider to help them support the new system, control of strategic decision-making in IT is now firmly with their management team. They are no longer tied into expensive software licensing models or exclusive support contracts.
The new, open source infrastructure has cut their immediate IT spend by 52% in year one. From 2007 onwards their annualised support costs will be reduced by up to 78%.
The Benefits
- Reduced IT spend in year one by 52%. Ongoing savings of 78% per year.
- Management controls IT decision-making not the vendor
- Faster, more stable network performance
- More secure and immune to Windows viruses
Technologies
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