Phoenix Software

How will housing associations benefit from partnering with Phoenix?

Managed services

Although housing associations often have extensive in-house experience and expertise within their IT teams, many still engage with partners for managed services to either act as an extension of their team, or for access to specialised resources.

Phoenix is supporting housing associations with a range of managed services that cover areas such as:

• Managed security – Microsoft Sentinel and Security Operations Centre.
• Governance, risk, and compliance – Virtual CISO, Third Party Risk Management.
• Technical support – Proactive and Reactive, Technical Support, Patching, Monitoring and Alerting.
• Managed cloud – Microsoft Azure.
• Managed EUC – Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop, Microsoft Intune.
• Managed backup and disaster recovery – Backup-as-a-Service, DR-as-a-Service.
• Managed data – Data analytics, DBA-as-a-Service.

By leveraging Phoenix’s managed services, housing associations benefit from access to an extensive in-house team of consultants who can share the collective experience and best practices gained from supporting multiple organisations. In many cases this provides more resilience and a lower cost than expanding in-house teams accordingly to deliver in these areas.

Security

In the current climate, security is paramount for those in the housing sector. Threats are evolving all the time and exploit vulnerabilities in areas such as identity and at the application layer.

Phoenix has a wealth of in-house, agnostic knowledge and capabilities that organisations can call on for advice when navigating the market for a solution that meets their security requirements, within budget.

Phoenix offers bespoke security technology advice in areas such as:

• Email security
• Endpoint security
• Network security
• Identity security
• Application security
• Data protection
• Business continuity

Engaging with a specialist partner in these areas allows organisations to put their business requirements, timescales, and budgets at the forefront of the conversation, and speak with a subject matter specialist who can provide tailored advice on suitable solutions for their needs.

Governance, risk and compliance

While technology goes a long way to combatting cyber threats, it is imperative that housing associations combine this with the correct training and processes to build a robust security posture.

Phoenix has an internal governance, risk and compliance team to provide impartial advice and support to establish more coherent policies and procedures to mitigate or respond to cyber threats. Any engagement in this field can also be mapped to a security framework of the customer’s choosing to ensure regulatory compliance.

Phoenix Software have been supporting housing associations identifying key challenges on the state of cyber security within the sector. With the NHF, they have produced State of Cyber Security Report 2023 where it outlines factors on how to be prepared for a cyber attack. Download the report to find out more.

Areas Phoenix Software support housing associations on

Microsoft

Phoenix holds the highest levels of accreditations and capabilities across the Microsoft stack, helping housing associations ensure they meet the business requirements from their licensing and cloud services while ensuring that costs are optimised from contract outset and throughout its term.

Through close collaboration with the Microsoft account management teams, Phoenix can help you assess new capabilities and assist with the rollout of new functionality to ensure the best return on investment from Microsoft maximising value for money in the process.

As a Solution Partner for Microsoft Cloud and Azure Expert MSP, Phoenix has a wealth of in-house knowledge to assist housing associations with everything from initial discovery and design, through to deployment, adoption, and ongoing support across all Microsoft technologies.

Phoenix is at the forefront of new developments from Microsoft and most recently has been selected as one of only three partners in the UK to assist customers with the early adoption of Copilot for Microsoft 365 and OpenAI.