Ainscough Crane Hire is the UK's largest crane hire company and the market leader for lifting solutions and services. It was founded in 1976 and has 30 depots nationally with 400 cranes ranging from 40 to 1000 tons. It operates with a total of 850 employees and an IT team of 12 members. Ainscough's vision is to be recognized as the leader for workplace safety, deliver excellent customer experience, and offer innovative lifting solutions.
Ainscough's IT team manages 400 laptops and desktops and around 850 mobile devices. In the early stages of the organization, the IT team consisted of just two people answering emails, fixing issues, and responding to IT requests. Over the years, the number of endpoints and mobile devices inside its network grew, and the team rolled out software like D365, Power BI, SharePoint, a MDM solution and a few more of Ainscough's own inbuilt android apps to work on day-to-day tasks in the organization.
With the increase in the number of devices in the network, the IT team used Windows Deployment Services to roll out OSs until it broke down when a new server system was installed. Then the team went back to manual OS deployment using a USB stick. Deployment took around two to three hours per device, which became a cumbersome task, given the increase in the number of endpoints.
When Ainscough's employees were working from home during the pandemic, they still needed to come into the office to deploy OS on their laptops or onboard a new employee. Realizing the need for an OS deployment solution, Ainscough opted for ManageEngine OS Deployer. Ben Anderson, the IT service manager at Ainscough Crane Hire said, "We moved over to OS Deployer because of how easy it is to set up and configure and manage going forward for any new OS images. We never even looked at another solution because this ticked all the boxes for us."
Anderson said that OS Deployer captures an image from a laptop effortlessly and requires less time to load an image onto a new laptop. He also mentioned that it only takes 15 minutes to deploy an OS. The ease of use is one of the main benefits that made Ainscough choose OS Deployer. "It has greatly increased our productivity and reduced the amount of time it takes to get a laptop ready for a new employee or to replace old or broken ones," Anderson said.