Founded in 2016, Forfar Education is a company that specialises in the education of children. They own and manage schools in the UK and across the world and their aim is to create inspiring schools that teach self-belief and deliver academic excellence. Forfar’s schools equip children with the confidence and resourcefulness that prepares them to grow, thrive and find success in an ever-changing world.
Challenges:
- Struggle to manage their various solutions effectively under one vendor.
- Strain on internal IT team meant they did not have the time to explore different options on the market.
- Outdated equipment and ageing infrastructure.
- Difficulty managing diverse systems across different schools.
- Cyber security issues.
Solution:
- Softcat conducted market analysis to find the vendor which fit budget and capabilities and was scalable when on-boarding new schools to the group.
- Softcat proposed Sophos firewalls to work alongside existing 'Sophos Intercept X' making use of synchronized security and consolidating.
- Softcat proposed Xstream licensing to offer further capability to firewalls and ease of management.
Outcome:
- Students’ and staff’s safety prioritised with enhanced cyber resilience.
- Unified management of endpoint and firewalls.
- Combined security approach with telemetry shared between firewall and endpoint.
- Scalable and future-proofed solution which can be replicated when on-boarding new schools.
Moving forward:
“Our relationship with Softcat has been excellent, their knowledge of the market and ability to find the best vendors of the highest quality has been a great advantage to us. It has cut down on our management time, provided us with their expertise in order for us to buy the best products that are out there to protect our children, our staff and our parents.” – John Forsyth, CEO at Forfar Education.
“What would make me recommend working with Softcat as a reseller is the wealth of knowledge and experts in different areas of IT to help in the decision-making process for whichever product you’re looking for.” - Al Butler, It Director at Forfar Education.