Success Stories / Academy Trust

Multi-Academy Trust

12 Schools · 8,000 Pupils · 1,200 Staff

50% cost savings

Replaced fragmented per-school licensing with a unified centralised stack.

The Challenge

This growing multi-academy trust had inherited a patchwork of IT systems as new schools joined the trust. Each school ran its own combination of tools — some used RM systems, others had legacy Impero deployments, and a few relied on spreadsheets and hope. There was no central asset register, no unified service desk and no consistent monitoring across the trust's 12 schools.

GDPR compliance was a particular concern. With 8,000 pupils and 1,200 staff across multiple sites, the trust needed to evidence data protection controls centrally. The previous per-school licensing model was expensive, inefficient and offered no oversight for the trust's central IT team. They needed a unified approach that respected each school's autonomy while giving the trust visibility and control.

The Solution — A Trust-Wide Umbrella

Echo-9 deployed a multi-tenant architecture giving each school its own segregated workspace within a single trust-wide platform — the umbrella covering all 12 schools.

GLPI

Multi-tenant GLPI with one CMDB per school and a central trust-level service desk. Each school manages its own assets and tickets, while the trust team has cross-site visibility for reporting, compliance and resource planning. Self-service portals for staff and students.

Zabbix

Zabbix proxy at each school feeding a central master at the trust office. Network infrastructure monitoring across all 12 sites, server health, classroom device availability and Wi-Fi performance. Trust-wide dashboard shows the health of every school at a glance.

Wazuh

Endpoint security across all trust-managed devices. File integrity monitoring on administration servers, vulnerability scanning and GDPR compliance automation. Centralised security event management with automated alerts feeding into the trust-level GLPI for triage and escalation.

"Before Echo-9, each school had its own tiny umbrella and the trust had no roof at all. Now we have one big umbrella covering all 12 schools — each school keeps its autonomy under it, but the trust stays dry too. The cost savings across the whole MAT mean we can actually afford proper support."

— Trust IT Operations Manager

The Results

50%Cost savings vs per-school legacy licensing
1 platformReplaced 12 different school IT systems
CentralisedGDPR compliance reporting across all schools
Multi-tenantSchool autonomy preserved with trust-wide oversight

The Future — Affordable Full-Stack Support

The 50% saving on licensing across all 12 schools freed up significant budget. The trust invested this into a full-stack support agreement covering all three platforms across every school. Echo-9 manages GLPI updates, Zabbix proxy maintenance, Wazuh rule deployment and quarterly compliance audits — giving the trust's central team of three the capacity to support 8,000 pupils and 1,200 staff effectively.

Is Your Trust Ready for a Unified IT Platform?

Discover how much your multi-academy trust could save by consolidating onto the Echo-9 integrated stack.