One of Cambridge University's historic colleges needed to replace an outdated ticketing system with something scalable, intuitive, and quick to deploy. Allied ESM delivered Halo ITSM with minimal disruption and immediate impact.
Sidney Sussex College is one of the smaller colleges within the University of Cambridge, located in the historic heart of the city and renowned for its welcoming atmosphere and strong sense of community. Founded in 1596 by Lady Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex, the College is home to approximately 355 undergraduate students, 275 postgraduate students, and 80 Fellows.
As the College continued to grow, it recognised the need to modernise its IT service management capabilities to better support both staff and students — and to replace a ticketing system that was no longer fit for purpose.
The College's existing ticketing system, osTicket, had reached the limits of what it could offer. As demand on the IT team grew, the cracks became harder to ignore. Functionality was limited, ticket management was largely manual, and there was no self-service portal to give staff and students a modern way to raise and track requests.
Beyond the day-to-day frustrations, the College also lacked a structured ITSM framework — meaning there was no consistent approach to incident management or service delivery across the organisation. What was needed was a solution that was intuitive, scalable, and quick to implement without causing disruption to day-to-day operations.
Allied ESM implemented Halo ITSM with a focused, efficient approach — delivering what the College needed most, quickly and cleanly. The implementation included structured Incident Management to bring consistency to support processes, and a Self-Service Portal configured as the primary entry point for staff and students raising requests.
Alongside the core tooling, Allied ESM introduced a foundational ITSM framework aligned to best practices, giving the College the structure it had been missing. The setup was kept deliberately simple and intuitive to ensure rapid adoption across teams with varying levels of technical confidence.
The streamlined approach enabled a swift, clean transition away from osTicket — with minimal disruption and fast time-to-value from day one.
The deployment of Halo ITSM delivered measurable change from the outset. The legacy system was replaced quickly with no meaningful downtime, and the impact on day-to-day IT operations was felt almost immediately.
With a strong foundation now in place, the College has clear plans to expand further — introducing a comprehensive Service Catalogue, extending automation capabilities, and continuing to develop the self-service experience for end users.
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