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Managing business growth and potential
disasters – IT upgrade delivers peace of mind for Rockspring
Property Investment Managers Ltd
What happens to a rapidly expanding business if its network and
email go down? Property Investment Managers Rockspring decided to
upgrade their IT infrastructure to increase server and network
capacity and add a new business continuity/disaster recovery
solution in case the worst should happen.
“Most companies are exposed to risk to some extent,” explains Ron
Boland, Senior IT Manager for Rockspring. “At Rockspring, certain
applications are more business-critical than others, and it depends
partly on the time of year, but usually we’ve got about 24 hours to
respond if disaster should strike. You have to balance the costs
with the risks and we opted for a solution that would get us back up
and running in 24 hours or so.”
As Rockspring expanded, it also became clear that the company would
outgrow its original system. “We realised that we needed to upgrade
our system to support the level of growth in our business,” explains
Ron. “We were close to our limit of seventy five users and we needed
more workstations. We were also out-growing our all-in-one file,
print and email package. Looking at our 5-year plan, it was clear
that we were going to need new servers and a new IT infrastructure.”
Planning for the unplanned
Specialist backup products and services can be costly but, with some
thought, it is possible to plan a system so that essential services,
like email, access to customer records and financial account data,
will never be out of action for long enough to harm the business –
one less worry for the IT Department. This is what ROCC was able to
do when it worked with Rockspring to upgrade their servers.
Rockspring was looking for a solution that would cover them in the
event of an equipment failure or a disaster, without incurring the
cost of a Disaster Recovery (DR) solution from one of the big
specialist companies. Having implemented DR solutions for other
customers ROCC has relevant experience to bring to the table. ROCC
was able to propose a cost-effective solution.
ROCC has a dedicated computer room at Egham, Surrey which houses
servers for a number of hosted services. ROCC installed two back-up
servers for Rockspring in the Egham premises, with a copy of the
latest data saved there each night.
If the DR system should be needed, they can soon switch the systems
over to back-up. How soon they can be up and running again depends
upon how quickly the back-up tapes can be retrieved, but ROCC
estimate that it should be about three hours until the data is
restored and running on the hosted servers in Egham. Within 24
hours, this standby system should be fully operational. The latest
seven days’ email will come online straight away and the rest of the
mailbox would be restored afterwards. If Rockspring should be
unlucky enough to have a continuing problem at their London office,
the standby machines could be quickly transported to London to carry
on working in Rockspring’s own office.
The Disaster Recovery project has been a great success. Rockspring
have secured the continuity of their business. No matter what might
happen to the servers in their office, the staff using the network
at Rockspring can relax, knowing that their property data is secure.
“This new solution is easier for us to control and we feel safe,
knowing that we have something in place that is backing up our data
in case something should go wrong,” says Ron.
Managing rapid expansion
ROCC had originally supplied twenty or so desktops and laptops and
three servers. These are connected by a VPN which supports the very
latest remote and mobile working with Blackberry hand-held devices.
Microsoft Office licences and server licences were included as part
of a Microsoft Select agreement.
Rockspring meets with the account team from ROCC Computers once a
month as part of their ongoing support contract. “The monthly visits
are very useful to resolve any issues that may arise and to keep
Rockspring up to date with new technology that has become available
in the market place,” says ROCC’s Account Manager, Steve Perry. “It
is a two-way session, where both sides talk about what the business
needs and which solutions might work.”
“The meetings are very helpful,” says Ron. We use them to
troubleshoot any technical issues that we can’t solve ourselves and
we discuss new projects that we are considering.”
They began to discuss options for the upgrade during these monthly
meetings, looking at the options for moving away from Small Business
Server and moving the software applications around.
“ROCC listened to our requirements carefully,” says Ron Boland, “and
helped us to specify the solution that would be the best for us. Our
Account Manager, Steve Perry is very knowledgeable and was able to
offer us several choices and help us weigh up the pros and cons of
each so that we could make an informed decision.”
Rockspring and ROCC agreed that they would take out the Small
Business Server and upgrade it to Microsoft’s Medium Business. They
separated the Microsoft Exchange and the file and print functions
onto separate servers and introduced a new server to support remote
users, as quite a few of Rockspring’s staff were regularly working
from home or on the road. This meant that the number of servers rose
from three to five.
“There is a lot to think about in an exercise like this, but it all
went very, very smoothly and the business felt no impact during the
changeover” says Ron. “Although it was a big project, everything
integrated very well and the business is very pleased with the
changes.”
With the new server configuration, each server takes its own load so
there is less strain on any one server.
“We’ve increase our capacity, which has taken the pressure off our
own IT administration” says Ron Boland. “We don’t have to worry so
much about archiving the system frequently and there is more space
on the disks. The new switches allow faster access to the LAN so the
network responds faster to requests for data.”
About ROCC
A Microsoft Gold Partner, member of the ORACLE partner network and
Adobe Solutions partner, ROCC is a UK wide operation with an HQ in
Brighton with offices throughout the UK (www.rocc.com). The ROCC
portfolio covers IT infrastructure services and support, telephone
systems, Intranet and web site development, business automation
software solutions, and software for the social housing sector.
About Rockspring PIM
Rockspring Property Investment Managers Ltd (www.rockspring.com)
is a fully independent Property Investment Management company formed
in 2004 following a management buyout from Pricoa (subsidiary of
Prudential USA). Rockspring offers clients access to unrivalled
experience of successful investment in commercial property
throughout the UK and continental Europe.
Learn More:
Visit
the Rockspring Property Investment Managers Website
