University College of Osteopathy
Case Studies
About University College of Osteopathy
Formerly the British School of Osteopathy, the University College of Osteopathy (UCO) is based at the London campus of the Health Sciences University and has come a long way in its first century. The OCO continues to play a significant role in championing osteopathy and furthering the profession both in the UK and internationally. UCO is the largest osteopathic educational institution in the UK. Their evidence-informed approach, top quality teaching and excellent clinical opportunities attracts students from around the world and produces graduates who go on to leading roles within the profession.
Providing University College of Osteopathy with Industry Standard IT Services
The Challenge
UCO’s previous provider neglected its duties, providing a bare minimum service. Inevitably, infrastructure issues arose and minor issues became major incidents. Failed switches weren’t replaced; security updated were incomplete; failed hot-swappable power supplies were left unresolved. The overall IT configuration was insecure due to ‘workarounds’ and a lack of long-term investment from the provider.
The provider’s lack of urgency meant that if UCO needed tech support, the service desk wait times were high and service tickets frequently breached service-level agreements—in short, the provider was not, well, providing…
After the provider failed to assist during a major incident, the UCO terminated their contract and looked a provider that could resolve major, long-standing issues and drive digital transformation for the university.
The Solution
In 2023, University College of Osteopathy chose Aspgate as a replacement IT provider.
Our team spent multiple days auditing UCO’s London base, creating network diagrams and reviewing configuration of network devices, servers, and Wi-Fi coverage. We provided a comprehensive report to the university and set about resolving the extensive list of issues.
We successfully replaced the end-of-life Cisco ASA with a FortiGate, which was reconfigured to be aligned with best practice. We re-engineered the routing for the campus as it was suboptimal, routing through single points of failure and via devices that were not supposed to be part of the routing hops. We also deployed a 10GB backbone to the network, enhancing VMWare performance and user experience.
Furthermore, we set up our monitoring tool to proactively monitor all aspects of UCO’s physical network, so we can act on issues before the university is even aware of them.
After fixing the infrastructure issues, we onboarded UCO into Aspgate’s own service desk. We now support all switches, firewalls, WiFi and more, while also providing escalatory support to onsite technicians when necessary.
Continuing Our Work with UCO
With all the major infrastructure issues fixed at the beginning of our work with UCO, we now focus on proactive monitoring and supporting onsite technicians if and when issues arise. By fixing the long-term problems with UCO’s physical network, we allow the university to run smoothly on a day-to-day basis, and our team concentrates on everyday network monitoring and managing of minor bugs and glitches.
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