The Challenge
This Junior School is located in the heart of Berkshire with 220 pupils, and is very popular within the surrounding community. When the new Head Teacher joined the school at the start of the summer term, he had concerns surrounding their existing ICT. These included the suite being cramped and in need of attention with the pupils sharing PC’s and the server was now showing its age, with no structure or backup for the network. The school were keen to utilise the space they had, making it possible for an entire class to access a computer. In addition it was necessary to bring stability and back up across the network.

The Solution
The ideas of the staff and governors were gathered through meetings with Soft Egg engineers. Following this, designs and costs were generated to match the schools vision and budget. The School chose a suite with 33 PCs, giving them over 100% increase in capacity. The existing suite was gutted throughout, with networking and all electrics removed, as well as existing hardware disposed of securely and recycled.

From here, new carpet was laid in the room, it was painted and display boards were mounted. A complete trunking system, housing the electrics and network data cable, was installed to maximise space within the suite and a rack was then added, which houses all the networking components, server, UPS and back up, keeping everything in one central location and reducing the footprint considerably.

Chosen by the school, Soft Egg supplied HP small factor PC’s and rack mounted server. We then migrated all the data from the old server, installed all the education software and joined all the PC’s to the domain. All aspects of this work were carried out by Soft Egg Employees, using no sub-contractors and was delivered within the 2 week timescale.

The Result
The school are delighted with their refurbished ICT suite that accommodates a full class with plenty of space for practical teaching. A new server has now been added which has given reliability and stability to the network, ensuring the staff are confident that all their work is securely backed up. The pupils are excited by the new suite, with one year six student commenting “ICT was so boring now I wish we could do it every day!”