Astaris: a company that cares
The relationship with Astaris - who specialise in complex hospitality IT support, came about almost by accident. Except, of course, we don’t believe in accidents. MD Sacha and husband Ivan’s daughter Kiki (who attends St Christopher’s Schhool in Hove - another great supporter btw) wanted to bake some cakes for the homeless. Due to the onset of Covid-19 this wasn’t possible, so we suggested a ‘Give us a Hand’ Glove Campaign which produced hundreds of pairs of gloves for rough sleepers. Afterwards, Sacha and I got talking and the upshot was that Astaris offered to adopt us as their local charity. Since then we have transitioned as an organisation to Microsoft 365/Sharepoint Cloud-based working, become a Google Not for Profit and Microsoft charity partner, equipped all our staff with remote working facilities and their own laptops and replaced the spaghetti junction horrorshow that claimed to be our computer network with a nice neat cabinet. Astaris staff have visited the office, have become firm friends and have sympathetically assisted less technical members of staff who may be stuck in the analogue/digital no man’s land.
Definitely one of the best things to happen for us as a charity in 2020 - and a crucial step forward because of the social restrictions we now have to work within.
If you don’t have or don’t like your own IT support company do talk to Ivan, Sacha, Anton, Rachael or any of the rest of the crew at Astaris in Shoreham.