Any Comms – Durham County Council

Durham County Council is made up of an elected assembly of 126 councillors accountable to almost 500,000 people in County Durham. The council is responsible for providing a wide range of public services to the people of the county.

The council also represents and promotes the interests of County Durham when dealing with regional, national and international affairs. Through effective local government, Durham County Council allows local people to look after their own affairs and to decide how and where money is best spent in their area.

Brief

During the BETT Show 2006, a deputation from Durham County Council saw that Avco were exhibiting and duly visited the stand. Avco has had prior contact with Information and Technical Support Service (ITSS), supporting Durham Schools since 1995 though they have been using an in house program for file transfer since the late 1980s.

By 2006 however, due to the more challenging amounts and nature of transfer data required to be collected they saw a need to look for a credible, well-supported solution from a specialised third party.

Following further discussions, Avco demonstrated its AnyComms product to ITSS, using reference sites in North Yorkshire County Council and Birmingham City Council and offered them a free pilot of AnyComms, with no obligation, across a selection of schools to prove successful connectivity and ease of use as a simple solution for a complex problem.

Outcome

AnyComms is a robust application designed for the rapid, secure and efficient transfer of electronic data between many users across multiple sites. It is particularly suited to the managed, and frequent, exchange of files between a central system and any number of external, fixed locations. AnyComms is installed in nearly fifteen thousand sites and used in half of England’s LAs.

The pilot period started in March 2006 and ITSS were so delighted with Avco’s technical support team that two months later they decided to purchase AnyComms licences, including technical support, for file transfers between the LA and over three hundred schools.