Lift Schools unified print, accelerated the serverless strategy with Sharp and Coreza.

Lift Schools, a fast growing multi academy trust with 59 sites across England, set an ambitious goal to become fully serverless across all schools. The trust faced the challenge of unifying its print environment while migrating to cloud based systems. Working closely with Sharp, Lift Schools implemented a scalable, cloud native print management solution that supported their serverless vision, reduced risk, and standardised operations across their entire estate. This transformation has allowed IT teams to focus on strategic support rather than managing legacy infrastructure. 

The challenge

• A fragmented and high risk on premises server environment.
• Identifying a cloud print solution that aligned with their serverless goals.
• Lack of standardisation across the trust’s print estate and suppliers.

Lift Schools oversees 59 sites across the country, ranging from primary and secondary to specialist settings. Prior to the project, each school operated with its own onsite server, creating a fragmented IT environment that was difficult to manage at scale. Christian Taylor, the IT Operations Manager for North England described it simply, the trust had “a combination of primary, secondary and special schools… all with their own servers.” This meant every site relied on its individual hardware for logins, policies, printing, and day today functionality.

Because of this setup, a single hardware issue could create significant disruption. As Christian explained, “If the server failed, users wouldn’t be able to log on… the school couldn’t operate.” Jim Gavin, the IT Operations Manager for East England also highlighted that the trust had “no one standard way of managing or maintaining servers".

As Lift Schools prepared for a complete move to the cloud, finding a print management solution that aligned with a serverless strategy became essential. The trust needed a solution that could operate entirely from the cloud, eliminate the need for local print servers, and deliver consistent performance across multiple regions.

Another core challenge was standardising a historically mixed print fleet. The trust previously operated devices from various partners, each with unique configurations and contracts. “We had pockets of other equipment,” Christian recalled. Jim added, “when all 59 sites are doing something different, it becomes much harder to manage.” Aligning the print infrastructure across all schools was critical to improving support efficiency, strengthening security, and ensuring consistency on the journey to becoming a fully serverless trust.

The solution

• A cloud native print foundation for a serverless future.
• Identifying and deploying a fully cloud hosted print platform.
• Unifying devices, workflows, and support through standardisation.

To support their cloud first ambitions, Lift Schools needed a true cloud native print management platform that could remove reliance on local servers and integrate cleanly across dozens of diverse school environments. After working closely with Sharp’s experts to evaluate their options, the trust identified Coreza as a solution capable of delivering the serverless functionality required. Its ability to operate entirely from the cloud allowed the IT team to phase out local print servers while still ensuring reliable printing in every school.

Sharp worked with Jim and Christian to introduce Coreza in small scale pilots across a selection of primary schools. This allowed the trust to explore the platform in real working environments with different network setups, device fleets and user behaviours. 

Sharp played an important role in enabling the rollout across the trust’s estate. By embedding Coreza with Sharp multifunction devices, we partnered closely with both organisations to help develop and tailor the solution, ensuring it fully aligned with our needs from installation onwards. Lift Schools already had a well established relationship with Sharp dating back over a decade, and the consistency, reliability and support provided by Sharp devices made us a strong foundation for the move to a serverless approach.

Sharp’s partnership with Coreza means that the trust has one point of purchase for devices, licencing and support, removing the administrative complexity of working with multiple suppliers and ensuring that every new installation includes Coreza ready hardware from the outset.

Together, Sharp and Coreza provided Lift Schools with the technology, integration support and scalability required to achieve one of the largest serverless print transitions in a UK multi academy trust.

The result

• A resilient, serverless print environment across every school.
• Reliable cloud printing that scales seamlessly across the trust.
• Consistent, efficient printing through trust wide standardisation.
• Following the full rollout of Coreza and Sharp devices, Lift Schools now operates a completely serverless print environment across almost all schools. This has significantly reduced risk, eliminated single points of failure, and strengthened operational resilience. With local servers removed, schools are no longer dependent on onsite hardware to authenticate users or manage print queues, and the trust has achieved the cloud based infrastructure needed for their long term digital strategy.
• Christian explained that the transition had been a learning curve, but the results are clear: “It doesn’t generate any conversation at all now because it just works.” The trust’s internal teams have reported dramatically reduced noise around printing issues, freeing engineers to focus on proactive support, project delivery and wider IT improvement across each region.
• The cloud dashboard within Coreza now gives Lift Schools central visibility across their entire print estate. The trust can track usage trends, monitor costs, and begin shaping print behaviour across departments and sites. Jim noted that this level of insight “gives us the opportunity to properly look at our printing expenditure… and work with schools to save money.”
• Standardisation has also created consistency across all sites, regardless of size or location. With Sharp hardware and Coreza working seamlessly together, the trust can deploy new devices quickly, maintain a unified configuration, and ensure that staff across the country experience the same reliable workflows.
• Ultimately, the combined solution has given Lift Schools a modern, resilient and scalable print environment that aligns with their long term serverless strategy, ensuring security, efficiency and simplicity across every school in the trust.

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