Case Study

Taking a Charity into the Cloud

Estimated Read Time: 10 minutes

Client: Milap

Core Vendors: Microsoft,

Project Date: November 2019

Taking a Charity into the Cloud

Milap is an international Indian Arts and Culture Company, based in Liverpool. Founded in 1985, Milap’s mission is to Inspire, educate and entertain people of all backgrounds.

Milap’s ethos is expressed best through these words ‘Uniting Hearts Through Arts’, as they use world class performances, events and projects to bring people together. Milap runs a varied national performance programme, an academy for emerging artists, and various strategic programmes to develop Indian arts. It is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation and a registered charity.

This small charity has a big impact; however, like many such organisations budgets are tight and the investment required to keep IT systems up to date has been difficult. Milap asked Computeam to assist them with this challenge. By harnessing the power of Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud, we were able to upgrade systems, secure data and make them both available from any location which turned out to be very timely as the Covid-19 lockdown was implemented just after we completed the project.

The Challenge

How do you get world-class IT systems on a charity budget.

Milap’s rich visual performances are captured on video and still image and made available over the internet. Like any organisation, they also need to be able to collaborate and communicate effectively to organise complex programmes of events; and as a charity governance and security are vital too. In the world of traditional IT, this would require expensive onsite servers and costly ongoing

maintenance to ensure that updates were applied to user devices. Lacking a budget to refresh IT regularly, Milap found itself relying on an ageing infrastructure and its previous archive of data was stored on a low-cost network storage device (NAS) located at the company’s main office. There was also a piecemeal approach to email and domain management due to voluntary IT support in the past, which meant that many users were operating from personal email addresses that were detached from the charity’s vibrant brand.

The Solution

Use the Microsoft Cloud to upgrade without capital costs.

Computeam’s consultants knew from the beginning that cloud services would help solve Milap’s IT issues. Having conducted a review of the available options, we recommended the Microsoft 365 Cloud suite, which offers generous cost reductions for the non-profit sector in addition to its usual value proposition. Computeam moved all of the organisation’s data from the ageing on-premise NAS storage

device to SharePoint and OneDrive, reducing data risk and making it far easier for users to access securely from any location. Finally, new Acer laptops were supplied built with Microsoft Autopilot and set them up to manage via Microsoft Intune. This ensured that new user devices could be set up in future without a visit from an engineer and that software, policies and security settings can be pushed out to the organisations devices remotely wherever they are. All of this was achieved for very little capital cost, aside from the purchase of the new staff laptops and desktops.

The Result

Just as Computeam’s engineers completed the project, the Covid-19 Lockdown came into effect. Fortunately, Milap staff were able to seamlessly transfer to remote working using the new suite of cloud services. A few weeks after the initial project, some hardware issues emerged with the new devices. Our team were able to test the new Autopilot provisioning system by delivering replacement machines that were quickly configured for users over the internet.

Going forward, Milap has a secure, cost effective place to store data and a simplified IT model that can be supported remotely by Computeam. It will be easy to expand provision if the organisation grows its staff in future and location is no longer a barrier to collaboration – a useful added feature for a charity that promotes engagement with Indian Arts and Artists.

Key Points

Migration of email, calendars and documents of Microsoft 365 platform
Supply and Deployment of new Windows 10 Acer laptop devices configured and managed by Microsoft InTune
ESET Anti-Virus and security configuration services
Ongoing cost-effective remote IT support for all users

Computeam Statement

We were delighted to engage with a charity like Milap. Just like our core education market, these organisations carry out vital work on a tight budget but there is no room to compromise on quality. Computeam’s passion for improving organisations’ outcomes using technology and our cloud-first approach were perfect for this project.

Owen Napier, Managing Director

Client Impact Statement

Investing in IT for a charity like ours is often considered a luxury, and we are forced to take donations, borrow personal machines or rely on support from partners. However, the output of the organisation must be worldclass as we provide performances, education services, talent development and do many other activities on which there can be no compromise. To make a significant upgrade of our IT systems and infrastructure, we needed a company which would help us match our IT to our organisation vision, but would be approachable, understanding and easy to work with. Computeam was all of this and also tried to understand our specific requirements and tailored the system to it. Our upgrade came just at the

start of the March 2020 lockdown, and they were excellent particularly because it came at such a challenging time. There were some teething problems, as an office set up quickly became a home set up, and our requirements were not at first fit for purpose. But Computeam worked to resolve them quickly and get us going. Ray Burdett, in particular, worked really hard to set us up and resolve any problems we had. We even had socially distanced outdoor engineer visits to get us up and running! We are really happy with the service provided by Computeam.

Alok Nayak, CEO & Artistic Director

Computeam Statement

Owen Napier, Managing Director

Download the full case study

Talk to us to see how Computeam can help your school today.

Get in touch >