Brintons Carpets

The Client & Challenge 

Brintons began manufacturing carpet in Kidderminster in 1783, and throughout its history, it has balanced tradition with innovation. The company pioneered the industry-standard 80/20 wool-nylon blend in the 1950s, and its expertise spans both Axminster and Wilton carpets.  

Today, the company is one of the world’s largest Axminster carpet manufacturers, with production sites in Portugal, Poland and India, and commercial offices across the globe encompassing the US and Australia. 

Following a strategic review of its core IT infrastructure and partners, Brintons made the decision to modernise its digital estate and identify a technology partner better aligned to its long-term goals.

In doing so, its new strategic IT partner needed to address a number of core challenges. Firstly, its legacy remote desktop environment was nearing a three-year contract renewal, which would have required investing in licences which would have soon been redundant under its plans to modernise. At the same time, its existing hosting arrangement made it difficult to introduce change quickly; a situation that needed to be resolved in order to support the Company’s overall growth plans. Brintons needed a partner able to move at pace and work as an extension of its internal team. From an operational perspective, with sites and users spread across the globe, Brintons needed to ensure staff could reliably access central systems from any location in the world. 

“We knew we needed a partner who understood our business and could help us move quickly,” said Nicola Davis, Company Secretary at Brintons. “With a small team and ambitious plans, the right fit was essential.” 

The Solution 

Having evaluated a range of leading UK-based service providers, Brintons selected Node4 to design and implement a modern hybrid cloud environment built on its Virtual Data Centre and integrated with Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop. 

“We went out to the market looking for a strategic technology partner, and Node4 was the outstanding choice …They took the time to understand our challenges and responded with a clear, well-considered approach.” 

Tony Owen, IT Manager at Brintons

Node4 delivered the programme in phased stages to minimise disruption and keep the business running smoothly. Working to a tight timeline, the team first transitioned around 350 users from Citrix to Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop, giving employees a stable and modern workspace experience, regardless of where they were connecting from. 

“Node4’s approach gave us confidence from the start,” said Tony. “They kept everything organised and manageable, helping us to modernise without disrupting day-to-day operations.” 

Once the desktop environment was established, Brintons’ core applications were moved onto Node4’s VMware-based Virtual Data Centre (VDC). This provided a flexible and resilient foundation that could evolve as requirements changed. The VDC was then integrated with Azure Virtual Desktop, so users across the world could securely access the systems they needed through a single environment. 

To strengthen operational oversight, Brintons also adopted continuous monitoring through a SIEM and SOC service built on Microsoft Sentinel. This delivers round-the-clock visibility of activity across the estate, backed by regular reviews to ensure systems are running at optimal performance and reliability levels. 

The Results

A Seamless Digital Environment  

With Azure Virtual Desktop in place, staff across Brintons can now work seamlessly from any location worldwide, accessing the systems and data they need through a consistent and responsive user experience. The new environment has also reduced the day-to-day operational burden on the internal IT team, allowing them to focus on projects that directly support the business. Service stability has significantly improved, with previous interruptions having “virtually stopped”, helping teams work without disruption. 

“Our colleagues around the world rely on this infrastructure to do their jobs and boosting reliability like this has been a major benefit of the project,” said Nicola. 

Major Efficiency Gains 

Through Node4’s partnership with Nerdio, the automated end-user computing platform specialising in AVD, Brintons experienced huge efficiency gains and time savings. By using a scripted, “gold image” deployment model, the team can now spin up new virtual machines instantly, replacing what was once a slow, manual process that took weeks to complete. This automation not only streamlines onboarding and software updates but also ensures users always start each day with a fresh, fully configured desktop, dramatically improving reliability and consistency across the organisation. 

“In the past, we had to build servers manually, which took several days,” says Tony. “Now, with the automated process through Nerdio, following initial scoping, it’s all stored and scripted. We can spin up new virtual machines from a gold image instantaneously. What used to take me weeks to rebuild, now happens in seconds.” 

A Flexible, Scalable Solution 

Moving to a consumption-based service means Brintons now only pays for what it uses, enabling teams to scale capacity in line with international working patterns and providing much greater budgetary clarity. 

In addition, the programme was delivered to a tight five-week deadline and completed within budget, enabling Brintons to avoid renewing a restrictive long-term desktop licensing contract. 

“The timescales were incredibly tight, but Node4 helped us get there without disruption,” said Tony. “Their ability to scale the environment quickly and adjust to what we needed made the whole transition far smoother than we expected.” 

Security and Visibility 

By adopting Node4’s Microsoft Sentinel SIEM and SOC service, Brintons benefits from continuous monitoring and regular security reviews. This gives the organisation much clearer visibility across its estate and helps validate that alerts are investigated and understood. Alerts are also easier to interpret, reducing time spent analysing false positives and helping the team respond more quickly. 

“Node4 provides us with clear, actionable insights, meaning we can focus on real security issues rather than chasing noise,” said Tony. 

Supporting Long-Term Growth 

Hosting core applications in Node4’s Virtual Data Centre has delivered a flexible foundation for the company’s next phase of digital development. For instance, Brintons is now exploring opportunities to adopt additional Microsoft services, including Office 365, SharePoint, and Azure storage. This forms part of a broader roadmap to evolve its environment over time and simplify how users access its systems and data. 

“This past year has been a huge technological shift for us, and the new environment means we can keep modernising without trying to do everything at once,” said Tony. “It gives us room to take the next steps when the business is ready, and Node4 deserves great credit for guiding us throughout this crucial process.”