Stone successfully delivers IT rationalisation at Future Academies

Future Academies is a multi-academy trust that operates ten academies across London and Hertfordshire.

The Trust is united by one motto, 'libertas per cultum', which means 'freedom through education'. The Trust has an excellent teacher training college with NCTL Teaching School accreditation and the Trust's mission focuses on helping young people succeed - no matter what barriers are placed in their path.

The Trust believes that with the right support, encouragement and opportunities, all young people have the potential to succeed in education and life.

The Trust seeks to employ staff who are able to inspire pupils with their passion and understanding of subjects. With the help of Stone, the Trust's academies are characterised by a forward-thinking, collegiate atmosphere where students and teachers share high-quality resources and IT so they can drive the highest rates of progress and attainment.

Tom Preston is the Central Technical Lead for Future Academies, and he works with two regional service delivery managers and one or two IT colleagues on the ground in each school.

In 2022 the Trust decided to make a substantial investment in rationalising and standardising IT security to future-proof their schools and develop a stronger community ethos.

"This decision was a great opportunity for the IT team to enable better collaboration and communication for our colleagues and pupils," said Tom. "However, we required external help with some of these projects and we were struggling to find the right partner - until we found Stone. "

Stone delivers successful migration to Office 365 single tenancy

Stone has worked with dozens of Multi-Academy-Trusts (MATS) across the country and has decades of experience when it comes to tackling the organisational and digital challenges faced by large educational establishments.

The first challenge at Future Academies? Handling data. The Trust required a centralised data strategy with policies and procedures to improve data security and organisation.

One of Stone's first tasks was migrating the Trust's various Office 365 deployments into a single tenancy. "The fact that schools under the Future Academies banner could not share their work and resources was a problem," said Tom. "We didn't even have a global address book in the Trust and as part of the drive to foster that collegiate spirit we needed to ensure we had one overall tenancy."

The Trust relied on Stone's expertise to lead them through the project. "Stone provided us with a dedicated project manager and they hosted weekly meetings to ensure all the various strands of the venture were being managed correctly," said Tom.

"Stone had the experts that we didn't have in-house, and we worked as a wider team - Stone provided the consultancy element to ensure that their work behind the scenes enabled us to implement everything on the front end. It was a seamless operation and Stone issued new passwords and accounts to 1000+ staff while migrating their data. The migration was done over one weekend per school and everything ran like clockwork."

Thanks to Stone's expertise the Trust now has a single Office 365 tenancy which allows staff from ten schools to share teaching and learning information via SharePoint. Previously materials had to be sent via email which Tom said staff found frustrating and time-consuming.

"Staff found it maddening that they could not use SharePoint and instead had to find time to search files and send over email. The absence of SharePoint also meant our people felt quite separate - but now our schools feel very much like one team and it's far easier to share."

Stone connections secure a competitive price for Barracuda backup

Once the migration was completed, the Academy needed an external backup solution and again turned to Stone for advice. "Stone suggested we speak to two potential providers - one of them was Barracuda, and Stone assured us they could provide a favourable pricing structure for schools."

Stone organised a demonstration of Barracuda's backup product and joined both parties on the demo which Tom said was excellent. "We usually get sent to a URL link when we want to look at software, so it was refreshing to have a demonstration with real people who talked us through everything. Barracuda was one of the simplest, most intuitive systems I had ever encountered.

"Stone represented our best interests by negotiating pricing for the Trust and secured us a very attractive licencing proposition, saving us a lot of money. It's so great to have Stone looking after us - we could only achieve the price we did because Stone has a great relationship with Barracuda."

The new system provides the Trust with cloud-to-cloud backup through a web portal with access to the Office 365 tenancy. All the Trust's data is backed up to the cloud, which provides disaster recovery and complete visibility. Tom adds: "If there is a problem with Office 365, we are confident that Barracuda will have everything covered. Thanks to Stone's extensive network of contacts, we have a 3-year contract on an easy, sensible, and competitive pricing structure."

AV completes the picture for Future Academies

The final piece in this particular investment jigsaw is the development of video conference units in each school. "This is another way to ensure we feel like one family rather than 10 separate families," said Tom, "and it makes life so much easier."

Previously, if any group wanted to meet in person, they'd have to travel to one school - so staff would have to travel huge distances just to meet. It's the kind of inefficiency that ate into schedules and reduced the frequency of all-important meetings.

Stone recommended a mid-range AV solution that met the needs of the Trust and over the summer holidays Stone engineers installed the new units.

Tom adds: "The AV units are the final piece of our single tenancy investment which continues to provide that collegiate atmosphere that's invaluable for our teams. This project originally  felt like the start of a mountain ascent for the Trust, but it's never felt too challenging or overwhelming because we've had Stone leading the way."

Stone listen to what we want and always respond, and I've never had to chase them on anything - they're always on it. Stone's project management skills have been faultless.