Stone Group enters Internet Service Provider market
London, 20 January, Stone Group, the IT and services company for the education and public sector, today announced that it has entered the Internet Service Provider (ISP) market. The launch of Stone Connected, available immediately, gives school customers the ability to purchase broadband connection, management and support from Stone Group.
The launch of Stone Connected is intended to give Stone’s 5000 school and college customers an alternative to the traditional Regional Broadband Consortium and Local Authority broadband offerings. Stone Connected is characterised by its flexibility, service and customisation to local needs.
Stone Connected completes a portfolio which underpins a focus on leveraging cloud-based technologies to improving learning outcomes and drive down costs. Stone Connected forms a connectivity layer for the cloud, security, application and communications management services available to Stone’s education customers.
Stone Group specialises in bringing engaging learning environments to life by working closely with school leadership teams to identify solutions that positively impact both learners and teachers. The consulting team can work with customers to ensure that all existing storage and computing requirements are in place to secure the network and make it available to teachers, pupils and school staff where appropriate.
Stone Connected is highly suitable to schools looking to cultivate a location independent learning environment, ranging from lessons on the playing fields to faster, more secure access to resources from offsite for homework.
Stone Connected offers schools complete flexibility, by providing a base connection package and a range of optional e-safety services.
Simon Harbridge, CEO at Stone Group explains, “A fast, secure and scalable broadband connection is core to a school’s technology strategy. Nothing, whether it is a curricular or business management issue can succeed without decent broadband. We’ve developed Stone Connected because so many of our customers are frustrated with their current broadband suppliers, and, frankly, we felt it could be done better.
“With Stone Connected, we’ve built a broadband product that is easy to make changes to. If you want to add services or wider connectivity, you are able to do so very quickly, because we’re cutting out the grid for learning style administrative, time-consuming middle-men. For example, there may be some internet content you need to access for an A Level course which your security settings precludes you from seeing. Stone Connected would make the necessary changes on the same day, so that you haven’t lost classroom momentum or an opportunity to teach the way you want to teach. With some ISPs that change might take weeks.”
