Benefits from a Zero Touch Deployment Strategy

Like many firms, Brethertons faced the challenge of adopting a flexible/mobile technology estate for their staff. Having IT equipment that’s static had became an obstacle to keeping the team productive during the Covid pandemic. Tony Woodhouse (Partner responsible for IT) noted that deploying laptops throughout the firm made sense.

“We wanted our people to be able to work securely from any location. Teams and other video call platforms are much more important to us now so we needed everyone to have a webcam too. We’re committed to migrating our infrastructure to the cloud, and know some of our users will rarely or never visit our offices. Finally we wanted all staff to have the flexibility to move between rooms and meet customers with their device in meetings at our offices. A fleet of cloud managed laptops seemed the obvious choice.”

It's a lot of work to refresh laptops for an IT team with other priorities. Which manufacturer do you choose? How much time will it take to setup the laptops for use? What will this project cost?

InnoVent's Solution

Working with Tony, we scoped out the firm’s requirements for the equipment needed and devised a plan for deploying 158 brand new laptops and monitors with the ability to power these laptops. The first step was to evaluate the hardware and work out how to deploy the equipment with the minimal amount of disruption.

Having tested and evaluated the various options, the firm chose the Dell Latitude 5420 laptops and Samsung 27 inch Docking Monitors, which work beautifully together and offered a neat look by avoiding the classic jungle of cables.

Yet how do you replace office based desktops with laptops and still maintain the ability for staff to work uninterrupted? This was a critical piece of the solution and by introducing Brethertons to our Managed Services partner, Consilium a zero touch deployment was built using Microsoft EndPoint Manager.

This new equipment was delivered to 3 locations: Rugby, Bicester, and Banbury. The Banbury office being completely new and set to open its doors in late May. Unfortunately, given issues with the supply chain, the manufacturer was late shipping the equipment. To help Brethertons, InnoVent provided 2nd Life units, on a Short Term Rental service to provide staff at the new office, laptops for its opening day. In addition, the legacy desktop technology used by the firm was removed at the same time the new hardware was delivered and securely disposed of using Blancco software.

“We chose Innovent ahead of other options for several reasons. Their no-nonsense approach and pricing transparency was refreshing. Their package of technical and hands-on services was flexible to meet our needs. On the hardware side they are manufacturer agnostic, and on the software side, they put us in touch with an excellent partner to help us configure Microsoft Endpoint Manager and Autopilot deployment. Their expertise in 2nd life recycling of equipment meant their end-of-lease residual valuation of our fleet was the best, giving us lower lease rental payments. Finally, when we encountered issues, they pulled out all the stops to get us up and running.”

Tony Woodhouse
Head of IT | Brethertons