ClickNetherfield

Display case manufacturers to HM The Queen and the world’s museums.

For nearly twenty years, ClickNetherfield has designed and built glass display cases for some of the world’s best known museums. Boasting clients such as The British Museum, Science Museum and the Musée du Louvre, as well as a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty The Queen, it is clear that ClickNetherfield are leaders in their field.

Based in Livingston, Scotland, ClickNetherfield exports all over the world. When presented with a problem for their future growth, it was natural that such an outward-looking company would look to the global supply chain for the solution.

The Challenge

ClickNetherfield design all of their museum cases in-house, which requires high-performance workstations and many highly skilled staff to operate them. ClickNetherfield’s solution was opening up a design team in India – but they needed a solution for providing these new staff with the tools for the job.

“We had previously handled all of our IT needs on-site” comments Andrew Paul, Business Systems Analyst at ClickNetherfield. “Whilst that had worked, we were conscious of the large costs associated with CAD workstations and how that could be supported considering our goal was to increase our workforce in India.”

ClickNetherfield tried a number of avenues, including outsourcing to other design studios. However, they still wanted full control over their data, and could not guarantee its safety in an outsourced scenario.

They eventually came across entrust IT Group, who had exactly the solution to fit their needs.

The Solution

When ClickNetherfield came to entrust IT Group and described their problem, the technical team had exactly the right answer. Experience of dealing with clients with similar issues to ClickNetherfield highlighted that they needed a solution that could provide access to CAD computing power, all over the world, at a fraction of the cost of the competing solutions.

The answer was 3D Design Desktop. The solution has won many plaudits since its introduction to the UK market in 2016 and promises design companies with power and flexibility that was previously thought impossible.

3D Design Desktop is a Cloud Workspace accelerated with high-performance graphics. Using custom built, high performance servers with specialist GPUs for improved rendering, the 3D Design Desktop allows complex 3D designs to be created and previewed in a virtual environment accessed from base model PCs wherever in the world the user happens to be.

Because the 3D Design Desktop is cloud-based, all it requires is an internet connection. The user connects using whatever device they happen to possess and can work on CAD designs as if they were using a high-performance workstation. What’s more, entrust IT Group were able to lock down design files to remove the user’s ability to download them from the cloud environment, thus keeping ClickNetherfield’s intellectual property protected.

The Benefits

“The entrust IT Group worked closely with our IT team, as well as some of our other technology suppliers, to ensure that the 3D Design Desktops were configured exactly to our specified requirements” says Andrew Paul. “The results have been fantastic. Using 3D Design Desktop, we were able to open up a design team in India and the feedback we have received from them is tremendous. They love working with 3D Design Desktop.”

ClickNetherfield also introduced 3D Design Desktop to some of their design contacts around the world and were surprised to receive offers for freelance work. Andrew Paul continues: “One of our previous designers moved to Finland and had to stop working for us. We showed him 3D Design Desktop and he was so impressed he offered to perform freelance work for our team from his home in Finland!”

3D Design Desktop gives ClickNetherfield unparalleled flexibility. They are now able to recruit designers from all over the world and keep their capital expenditure at a reduced, predictable monthly cost. Furthermore, all entrust IT Group hosted desktops include unlimited access to our support services. Our UK-based engineers are all Microsoft certified and most support issues can be solved over the phone – allowing ClickNetherfield’s designers to keep doing just that.

“From our very first contact, entrust IT Group have been efficient and detailed communicators. The setup process was lengthy, but very smooth and I cannot fault the helpdesk – they are always on hand to fix problems as they arise. What’s more is we have regular account management calls where we work to find the next way we can push our technology forward. I’m really pleased with the progress so far.” Continues Andrew Paul.