TIDMADT
AdEPT Technology Group PLC
07 April 2020
AdEPT Technology Group PLC
("AdEPT" or the "Company")
Transitioning Education to Home Working - A Recent Success
Story
7(th) April 2020: for immediate release
AdEPT Technology helping over 200,000 teachers and 900,000
pupils nationwide access online services to enable remote learning
during this Coronavirus pandemic.
Relevance for investors
The balance between public & private sector clients has
always been an important factor for AdEPT, with our turnover being
roughly 45% public sector - across the NHS, education and
Government - and 55% commercial, of which there are thousands of
customers.
This balance allows AdEPT access to multiple types of client and
creates a resilience as one sector waxes, whilst the other wanes.
This resilience has never been more important than at this time
extreme time for the UK economy.
AdEPT mobilising the massed ranks of the education sector
Amazing things rarely happen in a comfort zone. Following Boris
Johnson's announcement on the 23(th) March the world witnessed a
startling Daily Telegraph headline 'End of Freedom', to mark the
beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK.
The world changed overnight.
As a result, in March 2020, the massed ranks of the entire UK
education sector had to be mobilised, with a mission to rapidly
change. Sending thousands home to work remotely, adapting to
provide care for the children of key workers, and those children
with statements of educational needs - whilst also facilitating
home teaching.
David Bealing, AdEPT Education's Managing Director
commented;
"The challenge, facing 0ver 4,000 schools served by AdEPT,
placed everyone involved well outside of their comfort zone. Call
volumes doubled, solution developments were accelerated, thousands
needed to be informed, hundreds of thousands needed to be
supported".
AdEPT and partners deliver in a time of crisis
The education sector is ever changing - it's a world that has
seen a dramatic rise in the number of federated schools and
multi-academy trusts over the last decade - a change that has
brought about the demand for infrastructure that supports remote
working.
Staff in these MAT's and federated schools need more flexible,
yet still secure, access to their network and the critical data
held on systems, wherever they are working from.
Remote working tools have long been part of the AdEPT Education
portfolio.
The Coronavirus Challenge
Logging in remotely takes more than just remembering your
username and password. Remote working demands; a suitable and
performant connection, appropriate hardware and the correct
security configuration. And all of this needs to be scaled properly
due to demand.
The Change
AdEPT provides services to over 4,000 schools, with over 3,000
served in partnership with London Grid for Learning (LGfL). All of
these faced the instantaneous challenge (alongside millions of
businesses), to rapidly work from home - whilst serving pupils in
an unprecedented change to the norm.
Security is critical in any setting but is even more sensitive
in the education landscape. Security tools and practices must
ensure the appropriate safeguarding measures and best practices are
in place to protect some of society's most vulnerable from
Internet-based threats.
Be it; ransomware-attack, inappropriate content, cyber-bullying,
grooming or radicalisation.
Schools rely on their technology partners for their expertise.
Any home connection needs to be just as secure as a school one.
For the LGfL community the key technology underpinning this
mobilisation, and allowing remote working, is a solution called
'Freedom2Roam'.
This is a Remote Access Service (RAS) that allows staff to
access their school's network when not on-site, i.e. from home, or
indeed another school within the multi-academy trust.
Freedom2Roam includes all the required security safeguards, and
allows for a secure, stable and cost-effective remote connection to
a school's network, wherever the user has Internet access.
Since lockdown, AdEPT have seen and managed a 1,047% increase in
the number of users in schools using Freedom2Roam to fulfil their
duties from home.
LGfL and AdEPT
AdEPT has a long running successful partnership with LGfL. As
part of this AdEPT runs a manged service that is;
a) Supporting one of the biggest single cloud deployments of
Office 365, with over 1,000,000 end users (pupils and teachers)
b) Providing a technology helpdesk for over 3,000 schools with
over 200,000 teachers.
c) Working with Virgin Media Business to upgrade connectivity
for thousands of schools (A project called Pledge 2020 with a
target of upgrading primary schools to 500 Mbps and secondary
schools to 1 Gbps connections).
d) Keeping schools digitally safe by upgrading the LGfL core
network and rolling out new edge firewalls to over 3,000 schools.
This is part of a security framework providing up to 12 layers of
security.
e) Deploying WebScreen (v3.0) - a software solution that filters
over 1 billion web access requests per day.
f) Providing MailProtect, an email filtering platform that
filters over 2 million emails per day for spam and malicious
content.
g) Running USO, an authentication and identity managed platform
that allows appropriate access to digital teaching, learning and
safeguarding resources
h) Delivering eAdmissions, where AdEPT, working in partnership
with LGfL, provide an eAdmissions portal - this solution
facilitates the placement of over 200,000 children annually with
their chosen school.
This shared service is a real success story with the latest
round of secondary school admissions on 2/3/20 running without a
hitch. This service is instrumental to the process and "is one of
the best shared service stories in the public sector." to quote
John Jackson, CEO of LGfL.
i) Our graphics team, in partnership with LGfL have produced
content that is now part of official government guidance for
"Children and online safety away from school and college" The
article is;
www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-safeguarding-in-schools-colleges-and-other-providers/coronavirus-covid-19-safeguarding-in-schools-colleges-and-other-providers
and the content can be found here;
https://static.lgfl.net/LgflNet/downloads/digisafe/Safe-Lessons-by-Video-and-Livestream.pdf
How have these substantial changes been delivered?
The change programme has required strong collaboration between
several critical partners;
ü London Grid for Learning
ü Virgin Media Business
ü AdEPT Technology Group
ü Sophos
ü Netsweeper
ü Cisco
We've been delighted with the feedback, during this testing
time.
"Colleagues, this week has been exceptionally demanding but the
response from you has been magnificent and exemplary. Indeed, I've
been humbled to be part of an amazing response from the tech
sector. You should all be very proud of your organisation and what
the staff and teams have delivered in recent days.
This crisis will be challenging for some time to come. However,
with such great partners, delivering digital innovation at this
scale and pace there is reason to be inspired and feel confident
about the long term.
Most important of all, your awesome response, means that
children, teachers, schools and parents will benefit immensely from
your commitment and innovation.
Well done and thanks for the amazing support you've given
LGfL."
John Jackson - CEO, London Grid for Learning. John also passed
on some feedback from one of the schools we both service:
"The release of Freedom2Roam has probably been the biggest
single godsend. Since its release, we spent the time getting
bookmarks created for all of our schools - it's massively cut down
on calls from people struggling to get onto RD gateway (the Remote
Desktop gateway) from Macs and Chromebooks etc!"
Other news from AdEPT
The wider AdEPT Technology Group team, now almost entirely based
from home has been doing a host of other things to help their
customers through this difficult time including:
ü Managing an increase of 100% in support calls
ü Shipping of hundreds of new laptops
ü Setting up hundreds of new Virtual Private Network (VPN)
connections
ü Managing a 70% increase in customer demand for bandwidth and
licensing
Notes for journalists and editors-
For a full briefing please contact:
AdEPT Technology Group Plc
Phil Race, Chief Executive 07798 575 338
Ben Rogers, Head of Marketing 01689 814 700
Cantor Fitzgerald Europe
Nominated Adviser & Broker 020 7894 7000
Phil Davies/Will Goode
This announcement has been released by Ben Rogers, Head of
Marketing, on behalf of the Company.
About AdEPT Technology Group plc:
AdEPT Technology Group plc is one of the UK's leading
independent providers of managed services for IT, unified
communications, connectivity and voice solutions. AdEPT's tailored
services are used by thousands of customers across the UK and are
brought together through the strategic relationships with tier-1
suppliers such as Openreach, BT Wholesale, Virgin Media, Avaya,
Microsoft, Dell and Apple.
AdEPT is quoted on AIM, operated by the London Stock Exchange
(Ticker: ADT). For further information please visit:
www.adept.co.uk
This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the
London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct
Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United
Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution
of this information may apply. For further information, please
contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.
END
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