Upgrading Keep Britain Tidy

Who are they?
KEEP BRITAIN TIDY.

Where are they?
Working nationally; HQ in Wigan.

What do they do?
A campaigning environmental charity.

How big are they?
150 employees.

What did they receive?
Microsoft SQL & Windows servers, Outlook, Office Professional Plus and Windows 7.

The outcome?
Costs for upgrade programme substantially reduced.

 

Keep Britain Tidy is one of the strongest charity brands in the UK. Employing around 150 people with a head office in Wigan, it works throughout England on campaigns and projects to improve the quality of our environment. Although the charity is traditionally associated with the ‘pick up your litter’ message, it also runs a number of high-profile schemes such as the ‘Blue Flag’ award for beaches and the ‘Eco-Schools’ programme.

Cath Kilgallon is the ICT Systems Administrator for the charity, part of the team that maintains the IT infrastructure of the organisation to the high standard that’s required. For the past few years, she and her colleagues have accessed donations available via the CTX programme to keep the charity’s upgrade costs to a manageable level.

 

“We’re ready to upgrade our Microsoft software in the next couple of months,” she says. “We like to use Microsoft here, and the companies that we deal with all use it. CTX allows us to keep our costs down – we have the donated 50 copies, and we will purchase the rest at cost price. This brings a substantial saving to us – the money saved will either be used to upgrade hardware, or will go back into campaigning.”

The charity’s existing servers have also been upgraded. “Our website has recently relaunched; due to the huge increase in popularity of our site, we needed to upgrade our infrastructure to keep things running smoothly, and since then we’ve seen a marked improvement in running speed,” Cath says. “Like any organisation, we need to upgrade to keep on top of things.”

As a long-term user of the CTX donation programme, Keep Britain Tidy is pleased with the ongoing benefits that the scheme offers. “CTX is very easy,” says Cath. “We just searched for what we needed and made the order. We’re now looking into the Cisco products, as we may want to upgrade our routers in the future.”

“CTX is very beneficial for us in cutting down costs,” she concludes.