Growing smart energy firm SMS secures endpoints to the highest AWS standards

Overview

SMS Plc installs, owns and manages more than two million utility metering assets and provides energy management solutions throughout the UK. With expertise from Bytes, the company has now secured its IT endpoints to the highest standards after a period of rapid expansion.

Challenge

Following several company acquisitions, SMS grew to the point of having five major UK offices and over 900 employees. Now the business wanted to implement an endpoint management system. The company's IT team had other commitments and lacked the capacity to build the environment themselves. So SMS began to look for a partner that could own the project end-to-end and build a platform that could be easily replicated for business continuity using Cloud Formation Scripting.

The Bytes AWS team spent time listening to our business requirements and carrying out a detailed HLD. Bytes AWS Services tracked every element of the project ensuring we knew exactly where we are on a day to day basis – we would certainly use their services again for our AWS requirements.

David Harris, Group Head of IT Operations

The Bytes Solution

The Bytes Amazon Web Services (AWS) team were called in to help. They worked closely with SMS, carrying out detailed scoping sessions using the solution Desktop Central. Chosen by SMS, this unified endpoint management tool can enable companies to manage servers, laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets — all from a central location. Bytes' experts provided a High-Level Design (HLD) and Low-Level Design (LLD) that ensured the platform was built to AWS Well Architected Best Practices. Next came the creation of the AWS web/application server for Desktop Central. This was followed by the deployment of load balancing, AWS networking, AWS security groups and secure connectivity. Documentation and training were provided too. But Bytes didn't stop there. The team also set up AWS audit trail logging and created a CloudWatch monitoring dashboard with alerts. And should any problems arise, Bytes enabled additional AWS backup and recovery functionality using snapshots — allowing for business continuity without the costs of high availability (HA).

Benefits

Thanks to Bytes, SMS has been able to focus on its other IT commitments while being confident in an endpoint solution that's built to the highest AWS standards. With their vast knowledge, the Bytes team could deliver all the essential components around the Desktop Central solution — and provided extra value with monitoring, alerts and recovery capabilities that increase peace of mind.

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