The National Extension College

The National Extension College (NEC) is a not-for-profit educational charity with a strong, proud heritage in enabling students to ‘learn at a distance’. They came to Croft for support in modernising their old IT infrastructure.

Established in 1963, the National Extension College (NEC) is recognised as a specialist in online learning. Over the past 57 years, NEC has forged a reputation for quality and innovation. Their mission is to open up new possibilities for people of all ages by offering access to those essential school qualifications like GCSEs and A levels, as well as vocational qualifications in management, business, childcare and teaching.

Now more than ever, IT is at the heart of NEC. Vital to ensuring an administrative infrastructure and learning platform that provides students with the best quality environment for online learning. This includes accessing course material at any time and anywhere in the world, submitting assignments, connecting with tutors and fellow students via webinars and forums, and receiving advice from our support team. Technology plays a major role in helping students achieve their goals.

The Challenge

Croft supported the NEC to update their outdated on-premise infrastructure. They had a number of business-critical systems on old servers that were difficult to replace. They had to relocate to their new building without disruption that could cause serious harm to business operations.

The Solution

Our team of experts provided practical help and expertise in their transition from ageing on-premises hardware to a cloud infrastructure using Amazon Web Services. By first rationalising the infrastructure, and planning exactly what IT they needed and didn’t need, we were able to come up with a solution that worked perfectly for them.

As we migrated to Amazon Web Services, the NEC reduced the reliance and use of physical hardware and replaced these with modern virtual servers.

My role as Head of Technology is to keep the College’s IT systems and infrastructure operating smoothly whilst introducing new applications to support our students and tutors. We made the decision in 2015 to transition to cloud-based solutions but needed to maintain business continuity in the process. Before I arrived in post, Croft was doing an excellent job supporting a complex network with around 20 in-house servers. […] The support they provided in rationalising the infrastructure and then, very carefully, relocating to the new office was invaluable. A safe pair of hands both metaphorically and literally!

Paul Cooper
Head of Technology

The Results

Paul Cooper said:

“The hardware rationalisation and move was a positive experience – it has gone much better than expected. I’ve been through many system changes in other companies and Croft’s services compare very favourably with ones I’ve experienced before. The team is dedicated, they won’t leave until the job is done.

It feels like a partnership – they understand our strategy, they are not just service providers […] They are very open and I like that. It means I know where we stand and we can tackle issues together. They are also very flexible commercially, NEC is a charity and we have to get the best value from every pound we spend. They are sensitive to that and have made financial arrangements that suit both parties.

I came to NEC to a major challenge of transforming our systems and dealing with an ageing infrastructure. The Croft team has helped us to reduce the risk involved and transform to an infrastructure that we are now using to build new services rather than continually firefighting issues. NEC is now providing students and tutors with a more modern and compelling learning experience and we are continuing to develop and innovate on that sound platform. Our change process is ongoing and I still have them as a safety net. They are a very responsible and skilled group of people.”