Replacing legacy remote support without disrupting healthcare IT
A large hospital trust needed to replace ageing remote support tools without interrupting critical IT services. By choosing VNC® Connect, the organisation gained a secure, scalable remote access platform capable of supporting tens of thousands of devices, simplifying administration, and enabling a seamless migration for support teams and end users alike
The situation
Remote support ran on tools that were about to disappear.
The trust’s service desk supported clinical and corporate staff across a large, multi-site estate. Remote support was central to how it worked.
When a device needed fixing, a technician connected to it rather than walking to it.
That support ran on a mix of Microsoft Quick Assist and TeamViewer. Both were embedded in
day-to-day service desk work. Neither was a long-term foundation.
A dependency they had to remove, on someone else’s timetable.
Microsoft deprecated Quick Assist. A tool the service desk used every day was going away, and the decision was not theirs to make. At the same time, the TeamViewer footprint needed replacing.
This is the moment many IT teams will recognise. An external change removed a tool they relied on, and they had to find a replacement that would hold up at scale, quickly, without disrupting live support to clinical staff.
The requirement was simple to state and hard to meet. One dependable remote support tool that could carry the whole service desk, deploy across a very large managed estate, and satisfy NHS information governance.
- A direct replacement for Quick Assist and TeamViewer, with minimal disruption to a live service desk.
- Deployable at scale across tens of thousands of managed devices, using existing tooling such as group policy and SCCM.
- Integration with Active Directory, so access mapped to existing groups.
- Stability and reliability, to avoid a spike in service desk complaints during and after rollout.
- Manageable licensing across teams that hold separate budgets.
A visible product roadmap and responsive vendor support.
The Solution
One tool, deployed into the existing stack.
The trust standardised remote support on RealVNC Connect, displacing both TeamViewer and Microsoft Quick Assist. It deployed through group policy and SCCM into the existing Windows estate, with Active Directory integration so access aligned to the groups already in place.
The rollout reached a device estate in the tens of thousands, and RealVNC became the service desk’s primary remote support tool. No parallel tool was left running underneath it.
The compliance driver throughout was NHS information governance, including DSPT expectations for secure remote access to clinical environments.
The results
A migration that now runs quietly at scale.
- Remote support standardised on a single tool across the trust, removing the dependency on a deprecated product and retiring the incumbent.
- Operating across a device estate in the tens of thousands, with a low support burden. Review cadence was later reduced because the deployment was stable and complaint volume was low.
- Duplicate device records created during a Windows 11 migration were cleaned up programmatically through the API.
- Adoption grew to near the licensed capacity as usage spread across teams.
The Future
If this looks like your estate.
Large acute trusts are being pushed into the same decision. A tool they relied on is deprecated, an incumbent is due for review, and the replacement has to prove itself across tens of thousands of devices without unsettling a live service desk. This trust met that moment with one secure tool, deployed through the management stack it already ran.
