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Why choose string?

Business Process Automation

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A leading expert in Microsoft Cloud for Business

String is one of the UK’s leading experts in Microsoft Cloud for Business. We offer our clients and complete and comprehensive range of Microsoft Cloud services, technologies, platforms, and solutions. Whatever your business requirements and goals, we are here to support you on your cloud journey.

Fast and Scalable

Moving to the cloud enables a high level of elasticity and performance. Flex your capacity and resources to the demands of your business and scale to suit growth.

Safe and Secure

We offer the maximum level of data protection. Our cloud solutions offer enterprise-grade cyber security with automated back-ups, ensuring your data is safe and secure.

Cost Effective

With no need for costly hardware and software, we ensure you get the best value for money with a completely flexible cloud storage solution tailored to your needs.

Performance

Our cloud specialists design your solutions to suit you. Having a bespoke cloud environment built with next-generation technology means you get optimum and guaranteed performance. Plus, our cloud solutions are continuously evolving to ensure our clients get the best out of cloud computing every time.

PrivateCloud

Cost-effective, scalable, and offering a high level of control. Our managed private cloud consulting services ensure that you get the best out of cloud for your business.
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Build your own private cloud to enable your business to excel, both now and in the future.

Specialist Private Cloud Support

We have a team of certified private cloud specialists. This means you can get the very best out of private cloud, with support in migration, set up and ongoing management from private cloud consultants that put your business needs first.

Fully Managed Cloud

We support you from start to finish, providing you with expert advice and management every step of the way. We’ll learn about your business and create a bespoke cloud migration plan that’s suited to your needs.

Cloud Security

Our cyber security experts work on your behalf to ensure your private cloud data remains secure. Plus, you’ll have access to next-generation cyber security that monitors, detects, and mitigates threats to your business.

Cloud Optimisation

Our private cloud experts will continuously monitor and review your usage to acquire actionable insights that allow us to ensure your private cloud infrastructure works exactly the way your business needs it to.

How We Deliver

To deliver your private cloud services our consultants use Microsoft’s Azure Stack Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) solution – providing software-defined compute, storage, and network in a clustered node solution. Starting with as few as two nodes, we can easily scale the solution as requirements grow. Whether you know a lot or a little about cloud, our private cloud specialists will work with you in the way you need to ensure you get the private cloud infrastructure that suits your business.

HybridCloud

An optimum blend of cloud technology between private, public and/or on-premises infrastructure. Power your business at optimum performance with hybrid cloud.
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An integrated and secure hybrid cloud enables you to boost productivity and meet your business needs.

Specialist Hybrid Cloud Support

We have a team of certified cloud experts. This means you can get the very best out of hybrid cloud, with support in migration, set up and ongoing management from private cloud consultants that put your business needs first.

Fully Managed Cloud

We support you from start to finish, providing you with expert advice and management every step of the way. We’ll learn about your business and create a bespoke cloud migration plan that’s suited to your needs.

Cloud Security

Our cyber security experts work on your behalf to ensure your hybrid cloud data remains secure. Plus, you’ll have access to next-generation cyber security that monitors, detects, and mitigates threats to your business.

Cloud Optimisation

Our private cloud experts will continuously monitor and review your usage to acquire actionable insights that allow us to ensure your private cloud infrastructure works exactly the way your business needs it to.

How We Deliver

Our Cloud Journey Solutions approach means that we will work with you on an ongoing basis to identify the right blend of public cloud and on-premises technologies to suit your business needs. When circumstances change, we can look again at your cloud options. To deliver your hybrid cloud services our consultants combine Microsoft’s Azure Cloud, Azure Stack Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) solution, and secure network connectivity to deliver a truly integrated hybrid cloud environment.

PublicCloud

Get a pay-as-you-go, scalable, low maintenance and evergreen public cloud infrastructure. And take your business into the future with next-generation technology from Microsoft Azure.
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Scale to your demand, pay only for what you use, and get the cyber security you need, built-in.

Specialist Public Cloud Support

We have a team of Azure-certified experts. This means you can get the very best out of Azure public cloud, with support in migration, set up and ongoing management from private cloud consultants that put your business needs first.

Fully Managed Cloud

We support you from start to finish, providing you with expert advice and management every step of the way. We’ll learn about your business and create a bespoke cloud migration plan that’s suited to your needs.

Cloud Security

Our cyber security experts work on your behalf to ensure your hybrid cloud data remains secure. Plus, you’ll have access to next-generation cyber security that monitors, detects, and mitigates threats to your business.

Cloud Optimisation

Our private cloud experts will continuously monitor and review your usage to acquire actionable insights that allow us to ensure your private cloud infrastructure works exactly the way your business needs it to.

How We Deliver

Azure’s public cloud platform houses more than 200 products and cloud services created with your business in mind. Build, manage, and run your applications across cloud and on-premises with the tools and framework chosen to suit your business needs.

Industries

Transform your business with a better cloud strategy
Future-proof, streamline and protect your business with a cloud strategy that’s right for you, both now and in the future.
Healthcare
Retail
Not for profit
Manufacturing

Insights

Help and advice on building a better cloud strategy

The transition to any form of cloud infrastructure has the potential to prove highly disruptive to your business if done without the right support. That’s where we come in!
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Blog

Maximising collaboration and remote work with Microsoft 365

Blog

Maximising collaboration and remote work with Microsoft 365

Blog

The untapped potential of Cloud Services

Guides

Discover the top 10 reasons why you should choose Microsoft Azure for your business

Blog

Cloud Migration vs Digital Transformation

Guides

10 Things You Didn't Know About Microsoft's Cyber Security

The Sporting House – Microsoft 365 Cloud

Microsoft 365 Cloud Technologies Help Drive Olympian Levels of Success

Challenge

Whilst Sporting House had enjoyed rapid growth, their strategy was to significantly accelerate this. They were also acutely aware that their then IT service model was inadequate to support their ambitious plans for a number of reasons.

Solution

String worked with Sporting House to develop a new Microsoft cloud-centric IT strategy, that would leverage Microsoft 365 to support their wider business strategy.
“ We selected String because of their clear understanding of our strategic requirements, and were able to articulate how they, and Microsoft technologies could help us to achieve these. Our relationship with String has proven an extremely rewarding one, and we look forward to continuing to work closely with them moving forwards.”
Lee Cunliffe
Finance Director, The Sporting House
Jones Harris Chartered Accountants

Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Technologies Drive Paperless, Secure & Remote Office

Challenge

Jones Harris wanted to move to a fully paperless operation, without any interruption to the business. The company had a major dependency on a local Microsoft SQL Server database for their line-of-business applications, which limited their choices in terms of a potential cloud-only solution.

Solution

String worked with Jones Harris to help them adopt a hybrid-cloud solution, providing the optimal blend of Microsoft 365 cloud services, with the high performance computing power required by their LoB. Jones Harris now make full use of Microsoft's Power Platform, utilising Power BI for business intelligence, and Power Automate for business process automation.
“ String worked very closely with our internal guys, planning it out, mapping it out. There was absolutely no break in service, we were expecting there to be a few bugs, but it was a really smooth and impressive operation to get everything across and migrated. Absolutely top notch work, the String team!”
Martin Wigley
Director, Jones Harris Chartered Accountants
Ludlow Wealth Management - Azure Virtual Desktop

Access to Key Line of Business Applications Hosted on Microsoft Azure

Challenge

The increasing demand for online meetings, driven by the Covid crisis, meant that the Remote Desktop Solution was unable to provide an acceptable user experience. When the time came to refresh their IT infrastructure, we worked with the Ludlow team to ensure that the next upgrade cycle would address the changing end-user requirements, while further enhancing their cyber security and providing a high degree of scalability to cope with their ongoing growth.

Solution

Working with Ludlow, we produced a business case that showed that moving to Microsoft's Azure Virtual Desktop solution, and hosting their LoB application on Microsoft Azure would provide a more secure, cost-effective alternative to purchasing a physical server cluster. Their LoB application was migrated to Azure, and presented to end-users as a Published Application, removing the need for them to connect to a separate virtual desktop to access the app. Azure Backup was used to provide backup and business continuity and to further enhance Microsoft's already robust resilience measures.
“ String has consistently provided us with innovative IT solutions, without compromising our cyber security. The whole team are a pleasure to work with, and we consider them a trusted extension to our own team.”
Rob Brown
Chief Operating Officer, Ludlow Wealth Management Group
One Fylde - Microsoft Modern Workplace

Identifying Microsoft Modern Workplace as the Best Choice for the Client

Challenge

Following a merger between two organisations, our client found themselves with a disjointed IT service that comprised two large on-premise data centres, various security technologies, and a variety of remote access solutions. The result was a costly, difficult to manage IT infrastructure, with a poor user experience due to a lack of standardisation in the way IT was used. Of concern was that, as a large care provider, the client was responsible for the safe-keeping of a large amount of personal medical and financial data. Plus, users had become used to creating work-arounds to allow them to access and share sensitive information. The complexity of the IT infrastructure also meant they were suffering frequent service outages.

Solution

We discussed the opportunity for them to move away from their large, unwieldy on-premises infrastructure and instead to move to a wholly Microsoft cloud-based IT service. From our early discussions it was clear that such a move would allow us to radically re-imagine their approach to document and information management, business processes, and information security. The concept was embraced enthusiastically by the client, and it was agreed to move on to an initial business case analysis exercise. Firstly, however, we were engaged to stabilise the existing infrastructure, and to address the inadequate business continuity provision. The move to Microsoft Modern Workplace has allowed One Fylde to ensure data is more secure and improve workplace processes. All 400 users were able to access all relevant documents securely from any location. And the client can now enjoy the very latest in innovations from Microsoft on almost a weekly cycle.
“ One Fylde started to work with String at a time where our IT infrastructure was causing problems almost on a daily basis. The problems were meaning staff couldn't do their job to support people with learning disabilities in the way we wanted. String became involved with us and worked as a 'real' partner, feeling like part of the team to solve the immediate problem and with an eye to a longer-term more sustainable solution. We are now in a position where I can sleep at night and our staff are seeing the benefit of the huge amount of work that has gone on. And on a seperate note the whole team at String are really friendly, personable and supportive, working with us and continuing to support us to look at the future. ”
Tracey Bush
CEO, One Fylde

FAQs

Basic principles and processes

When we build your cloud strategy we follow these few basic principles and processes to ensure we deliver the right long-term cloud strategy to take your business into the future.
Microsoft for Business How we help

Size for the now, scale for the future

Unlike traditional IT refresh lifecycles, which attempt to predict future IT needs, and then purchase sufficient additional compute resources to provide for those needs, our business-case led strategies allow current and future requirements to be modelled in a series of scenarios, providing clarity in an ever-changing world.

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An end-to-end business case

Our years of experience have taught us what matters when building a business case. When creating our scenarios, we consider our clients’ complete IT service infrastructure, including line items such as: servers, storage, networks, desktops, applications, licensing, mobile devices, training, power consumption, business continuity and property costs.

Real cashable savings

Our business cases and strategies focus on identifying real, cashable savings, not hypothetical savings. It’s all too common for a business case to include such ‘savings’ as: 10 minutes per employee, per day times salary. We realise that, whilst important in terms of end-user experience, not many organisations will ever see those savings realised as actual cash in the bank.

Dragon’s Den ready

We work our key client sponsors to develop a strategy and business case that is ready to face the full scrutiny of the wider client leadership team, end-user communities, and external auditors.

First step of the process

We learn about your business, from the day to day to your long-term goals, challenges, and current IT services.

Second step of the process

We identify your tech needs and deliver a strategy discussion document that includes strategic options to suit your goals and budget. From here we let you chop and change elements to develop your ideal plan.

Third step of the process

Once we’ve reviewed your options, we’ll finalise them and detail your best plan of action. From cloud solutions, hardware and software, to supplies and more, we’ll detail it all.

Fourth step of the process

Should you choose us to implement your IT strategy, we’ll begin, ensuring we work closely with you. You’ll get a dedicated team with the specialisms that are required, and we’ll source any cloud subscriptions and hardware, put any planned systems and programmes in place, carry out migrations and more. All done in a smooth transition so that your business is unaffected.

How can we help?
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