Allen and Heath is a leading designer and manufacturer of mixing desks for live sound, permanent installation, DJs, broadcast and recording studios. Based in Penryn, the company has been making and distributing mixing desks internationally for over 40 years, supplying bands like Pink Floyd and The Who. Their customers are spread across almost every sound environment imaginable, with all product ranges designed at their Cornwall headquarters.
With their R&D team using cutting-edge technology and advanced techniques, quality has always been at the forefront of the company’s ethos. IT systems are imperative to the ongoing success of the business.
Senior IT Technician, Matt Hitchman is trained in Microsoft desktop management and server support and oversees the systems that Allen and Heath’s employees rely upon. He explains:
“We have been working with Piran for over five years. A wireless system we had had installed by another company needed upgrading to work with our phone system, and we needed a local supplier to install this.
We were impressed with the work Piran achieved and asked Dan and his team to implement a new cluster environment – a virtualisation set up to replace our old servers. Piran helped us to implement the system properly.”
Since the installation everything has been running smoothly. Allen and Heath with very large files – in the GB range, and need a lot of storage space and with the new cluster. They now have sufficient capacity for the next 6-7 years!
Following some changes within the company, Allen and Heath also needed to separate out our internal IT systems, identifying jobs they may need additional support with. One of our senior engineers works closely with the company regularly and visits in person when addition assistance is needed.
"All in all, Piran Technologies have enabled us to work smoothly, faster and more efficiently. With an evolving business such as ours, it’s a great comfort to know Piran will continue to be part of our continued growth."
Matt continues – “We absolutely see Piran Technologies as our strategic partner; Dan oversees where we are and where we are headed, ensuring our systems work with us to achieve this. Together, the Piran team has been responsible for designing bespoke systems to suit our IT needs and implementing a lot of our new internal systems, such as backups and the Cloud.
“Our R&D department had requested Google Apps because of the online collaboration tools – they wanted to be able to have multiple people editing one document at the same time and that’s the main thing they use it for. We also decided to adopt Microsoft Office 365 for mail; which has enabled all our staff to work remotely from home and on the move, from any internet connected device, wherever they are.
Previously, we had an on site exchange server; which needed far more maintenance and meant it was more difficult for staff to work from home. It relied on our server and connection at base to be up and running, but now if the connection goes down here, people can still go home and access emails.
In terms of cost, we have been able to replace old solutions with better quality software, without any additional cost. We also have purchased some great hardware and thanks to Piran, it’s set up correctly.
