IT Services and Telephone Systems Case Study

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.rockspringpim.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.