About the Customer
The Challenge
To deliver equitable educational outcomes, Arbor Academy Trust identified the need for a consistent IT environment across all academies. Historically, schools operated on disparate systems with hardware at varying stages of its lifecycle.
The Trust partnered with a specialist to lead a digital transformation with several key objectives:
- System Consolidation: Migrating all academies onto a single, unified platform.
- Common Identity: Implementing a single set of credentials for all users to access resources securely from any location.
- Infrastructure Modernisation: Reducing reliance on legacy on-premises hardware, in line with Department for Education (DfE) digital technology standards.
- Sustainability: Lowering the Trust’s overall carbon footprint through cloud-based, centrally managed infrastructure.
The Solution
The Trust’s leadership team collaborated with Levett Consultancy technical consultants to design a solution powered by Google Workspace for Education Plus. A critical component was the implementation of Google Credential Provider for Windows (GCPW), which allows users to sign into Windows devices using their common Google identity. This ensured that regardless of the hardware used, the user experience remained identical.
Key Project Phases
The Levett Consultancy team executed the transformation through three strategic phases:
- Configuration: Setting up Google Workspace for Education Plus according to industry best-practice standards.
- Data Migration: Transitioning all legacy data from on-premises servers to a secure cloud environment.
- Deployment & Policy Creation: Rolling out GCPW across all Windows endpoints. Customised policies were developed to manage these devices, creating a perfectly consistent learning environment across both Windows and Chrome devices.
Project Timeline and Approach
The transformation was completed over 12 months. To maintain continuity in the classroom, a phased approach was adopted, migrating one academy per half-term. This allowed the team to troubleshoot and fine-tune the environment at each site before moving to the next, resulting in minimal downtime and high user confidence.
The Outcome
The project implemented by Levett Consultancy has delivered following transformative results for Arbor Academy Trust:
- Seamless Accessibility: Staff and students now benefit from a "Common Identity." Where they can move between different academies and access their personal and team resources on any device using a single set of credentials.
- Operational Agility: The unified platform allows the IT support team to manage incidents centrally and deploy system-wide changes instantly.
- Cost & Carbon Reduction: As reliance on on-premises hardware diminishes, the Trust has seen a reduction in maintenance costs. This smaller hardware footprint has also significantly lowered the Trust’s carbon emissions, meeting key environmental targets.
We have worked with Levett Consultancy for four years. They listened to our needs and produced a three-year technology priority plan that was easily presented to stakeholders. Communication was excellent throughout the project, and we now have a consistent system across all academies to build from for the future.Jason Cook - Executive Principal