Managing business growth and potential disasters – IT upgrade delivers peace of mind for Rockspring Property Investment Managers Ltd
9 May 2007

London based Property Investment Managers Rockspring have upgraded their IT infrastructure to increase server and network capacity and added a new business continuity/disaster recovery solution in case the worst should happen.

As the property market has prospered, Rockspring has grown significantly. Headquartered in London and with six continental offices, Rockspring has €6.17 bn of assets under management in 15 European countries.

To manage the IT Rockspring rely on ROCC to provide reliable, cost effective IT support and solutions. “ROCC listened to our requirements carefully,” says Ron Boland, Senior IT Manager for Rockspring “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.”

Planning for the unplanned
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 and proposed 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.

“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
As the business grew Rockspring agreed with ROCC that the best course of action was to upgrade from Windows Small Business Server to Microsoft’s Medium Business solution separating 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.