ABOUT AIT
Why AIT?
Who are we? We've thrived from word of mouth and recommendations; because service is at the heart of everything we do
Advanced IT Services (AIT) is a specialist Managed Service Provider, partnering primarily with Schools, Trusts and Academies across the UK. We provide expert solutions including Connectivity, IT Support, Network Infrastructure and Installations.
Since 2000 we've grown on one simple idea: do the work so well that schools tell other schools. Today that means round-the-clock support, nationally accredited security and a set of platforms we built ourselves — included with our service, not sold on top. This page shows you the proof.
Why us?
The right people, in the right places
AIT have worked within the Education Sector for two decades, and our team have, combined, over 150 years of experience; which has given us unique understanding of the challenges Schools and Trusts face when it comes to their ICT requirements, and long-term strategic planning.
Our core business is supporting organisations within the Public Sector which has allowed us to develop strong partnerships with industry leaders and expand our team of dedicated experts who share our vision to become a leading Education ICT Partner in the UK.
Our foundation is built upon clear principles which are the DNA that run through the veins of our business, from onsite support technicians, a dedicated installation team, right through to personal account managers for each of our schools. AIT is driven by these values which translate into every aspect of our services.
That vision isn't an ambition any more — it's how we operate. From primary schools with a single part-time technician to multi-academy trusts centralising IT across dozens of sites, our 75-strong team supports 249 schools and 20 trusts across the UK, backed by our own data centres, our own installation crews and our own software. Read more about how we got here on our About Us page.
Three reasons schools stay with us
24/7 support, all year round
School IT doesn't keep school hours. Servers patch overnight, MIS backups run in the holidays, and a broken network at 7am is a lost teaching day by 9. Our helpdesk and monitoring run 24/7, 365 days a year, so a P1 raised during a summer rebuild gets the same urgency as one raised mid-morning in term time. See exactly how we grade urgency on our Ticket Priorities page.
ISO 27001 certified
We hold ISO 27001 certification for information security management — the same standard your auditors, insurers and the DfE increasingly expect of anyone touching school data. It means our processes for handling safeguarding-sensitive systems, backups and personal data are independently audited, not self-declared. It's the backbone of everything on our Security hub, from safeguarding and filtering to disaster recovery.
Established 2000
Twenty-six years supporting schools, and our very first school is still a client today. In a market where support contracts churn every three years, that continuity is the single strongest reference we can offer — and we'll happily put you in touch with schools who've been with us for a decade or more.
Every AIT school gets Helpdesk Reporting — included
"Great service" is easy to claim and hard to check. So we built Helpdesk Reporting, our live performance platform, and we give it to every school and trust we support — included with our service, not sold on top. Log in and the Executive overview shows your leadership team, in plain English, how your support is actually performing: tickets raised and resolved, response and fix times, and trends over the term. KPI Insights breaks that down by priority, site and category; Training insights shows where staff would benefit from CPD instead of another ticket; and the built-in AI Assistant answers questions like "how did response times compare to last term?" without anyone building a report. Trusts get per-trust filters, so a COO can compare every school side by side — and each head still sees their own school's picture.
The widgets below show the kind of view your leadership team gets:
Illustrative demo data
The figures above are illustrative examples, shown as static content for demonstration only — they are not live data. Your school sees its own real numbers, updated continuously, inside Helpdesk Reporting.
This is the difference transparency makes: when your provider's performance is on a dashboard you control, review meetings stop being about anecdotes. Read how this works day to day on our IT Support page.
Included with our service, not sold on top
Most providers resell someone else's toolset. We build our own — four platforms, developed in-house for schools and trusts, all included in your AIT service.
AIT Horizon — for your leadership team
Horizon gives heads, bursars and trust executives one place to see IT strategically, with dedicated Executive, Schools and Support views. Its IT Finance module turns the annual budget scramble into a plan: 5-year projections that show, for example, an illustrative secondary school that its device estate hits end-of-life in 2028 — so the hardware refresh is phased over three budgets instead of landing in one; software licensing tracked in one register so nothing renews unseen. The RAG compliance tracker shows governors at a glance where you stand, policies live alongside the evidence, and your strategy roadmap is a living plan we review with you — the same roadmap we build through IT Strategy & Vision.
Illustrative demo data
Helpdesk Reporting — for performance transparency
Covered in full above: Executive overview, KPI Insights, Training insights, the AI Assistant and per-trust filters. Your numbers, your login, no waiting for a quarterly report.
Illustrative demo data
AIT Atlas — how we run our own operation
"Navigate. Manage. Deliver." Atlas is the platform our own team runs on, managing our people, projects, schools and technology operations — CRM, Rota, Fleet and HR in one system. It's why the right engineer arrives on the right day with the right kit, and why a summer cabling project hits its milestones. You don't log into Atlas; you feel it in the reliability of everything we deliver.
Illustrative demo data
AIT Ordering — procurement without the paper chase
From quote to PO to delivery tracking in one place, with a curated catalogue of education-appropriate kit and built-in supplier management. Your office team sees exactly where an order is — quoted, approved, shipped, delivered — without chasing emails, and your audit trail writes itself.
Illustrative demo data
PROUD OF OUR REPUTATION
Above and beyond
"Our Trust have worked with AIT for almost ten years. In that time we have developed a trusting relationship, and they are continually looking for ways in which to improve the service to our schools. As their team have grown, so have their capabilities, but they have never lost that personal approach which is what separates them from counterparts. If you're looking for a provider who can really deliver…look no further than AIT!"
J Haigh
PROUD OF OUR REPUTATION
Our Vision
We started out back in 2000 at George Spencer Academy in Nottingham providing IT support and services to the site, and since then we've now grown to become one of the leading education IT providers in the UK, supporting 249 schools & MATs. In 2010 our Managing Director Phil Dixon took full ownership of Advanced IT Services and began building foundations to expand into providing further services and support to the ever growing IT industry. Phil began expanding the management team at AIT, all of whom are still with us today and share the same vision and ambition for AIT as we continue to grow.
Our vision from day one has always remained the same; to enrich the lives of those we serve through the use of tech and create unified seamless solutions which really do meet the requirements of users. Through centralised cloud solutions via our wholly owned data centres we are enabling schools, MATs and businesses to unify their IT solutions whilst maximising budgets whilst never compromising on performance, speed and our service.
…And we like to think we stand the test of time because our very first school George Spencer Academy is still with us today.
That was the story then. Today the same values scale a long way further: 249 schools and 20 trusts supported across the UK, a 75-strong team, and the four platforms above — built because off-the-shelf tools never quite fitted how schools actually work.
Your Customer Portal
Everything above lives behind one door. The Customer Portal is your single login hub for all four platforms — AIT Horizon, Helpdesk Reporting, AIT Atlas project visibility and AIT Ordering — plus remote support and our live Service Status page. One bookmark for your office team, one place for your SLT.
Frequently asked questions
No — AIT supports schools, academies and multi-academy trusts across the UK. We grew out of Nottingham, and our head office and data centres remain in the Midlands, but our support model was built for distance from day one: a 24/7 helpdesk, remote monitoring and management, regional engineer coverage scheduled through our Atlas platform, and installation teams that deliver projects nationwide. Wherever your school is, the service — and the platforms that come with it — are the same.
Yes. Our helpdesk and monitoring operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Critical issues are triaged around the clock, and our monitoring frequently raises tickets before your staff notice a problem. Response targets are graded by urgency — a whole-school outage is treated very differently from a single faulty projector — and the full breakdown is published on our Ticket Priorities page.
No — the KPI widgets on this page are illustrative, static examples included to show the kind of reporting you receive; they are not live data and no live client performance data is ever published on our website. As an AIT school you see your own genuine figures inside Helpdesk Reporting, updated continuously and filtered to your school or trust.
No. All four of our platforms — AIT Horizon, Helpdesk Reporting, AIT Atlas (which powers our own operations) and AIT Ordering — are included with our service, not sold on top. We built them because schools were being charged separately for visibility they should have by right: your budget projections, your support performance and your order tracking are part of the job, not an upsell.
ISO 27001 is the international standard for information security management. Holding it means an independent auditor has verified how we handle data, access, incidents and risk — including the safeguarding-sensitive systems schools trust us with. Practically, it makes your own compliance easier: when governors, auditors or your DPO ask how your IT provider secures pupil data, "ISO 27001 certified" is an evidenced answer, and our Security services are built on the same framework.
LETS TALK
SPEAK TO US
Ready to embark on your digital journey? Get in touch for a friendly chat with our team!
Call us on 0115 9170 197 or use the form below — or head to our contact page.