Atlanta Technology Ltd 20a Brownlow Mews London WC1N 2LA +44 (0)

Transcription

1 Atlanta Technology Ltd 20a Brownlow Mews London WC1N 2LA +44 (0)

2 Benefit Avoiding the need to continually fire-fight problems Solid platform for ensuring well planned and managed IT environment Value Aims to exceed performance targets Supports customer s high level corporate profile and presence Width and depth of specialist knowledge over entire network Background A winner of numerous industry awards, Sacker & Partners LLP is ranked by Chambers UK 2010 legal directory, an authoritative industry source, as the UK s leading pensions advisory law firm and states that it remains the pensions firm of choice for more of the UK s Top 100 pension schemes than any other law firm. The firm is unrivalled in concentrating so much pensions expertise under one roof, and the 50 fee-earning lawyers provide advice to around 700 customer organisations, including trustees, employers, and other organisations such as trade unions and charities. General advisory work offers an integrated service across teams dedicated to corporate transactions, dispute resolution, international, investment, the public sector and regulation. With around 100 staff in total, Sackers is classified as a medium sized business. However, as a professional services business sitting at the shoulder of some the UK s leading organisations, it has an elevated corporate profile and presence. Consequently it has very demanding requirements from technology. Previously we had a recovery suite ready to go in Stratford with redundant racks of equipment and 50 desks set aside. Maintained at full readiness, realistically, it would have taken about 1 day to switch over from our City location. The Atlanta Technology Back in 60 DR proposition is an undertaking that a business can return to operational status in as little as an hour. Problem We are heavily reliant on IT within the business, says Danny O Connor, Head of IT. With an in-house IT team of 3, Sackers has an average ratio of IT to non-it staff. But we need access to IT services that are way beyond the average capability of three people. The problem for many SMBs is that small IT teams can be caught up in a cycle of fire-fighting, where the team have to respond to a constant string of user and system problems. It s like a treadmill and the negative implications for the business can be far reaching. 1.

3 The IT function can be seen as reactive and not in control; it can mean under development of infrastructure, systems, applications and IT skills - in short you cannot plan for anything, things happen and you get swept along. Users can perceive that technology is haphazard; IT failures that result in poor quality customer delivery through the loss of services or data damage the ability of the business to deliver with confidence. Ultimately this can damage business performance and even affects morale. Danny O Connor says: That scenario would be unacceptable for Sackers. We need access to the best solutions that enable us to service the needs of our users and customers. Atlanta has a customer focused attitude and adopts the aim of exceeding performance targets. Solution When I came into the business 18 months ago I inherited a business relationship between Sackers and Atlanta Technology that stretched back around 10 years, says Danny O Connor. I came from a pan-european environment and we were self-reliant because we had a good range of in-house skills. The reality in this smaller environment at Sackers is that we need access to a good range of skills from external specialists. And that s why the relationship with Atlanta has endured as a long term partnership. Atlanta continues to provide consultancy and support across multiple elements of our network and systems, says O Connor. A number of major projects have been undertaken that are supported and serviced by Atlanta today. These have included a converged Cisco VOIP system, virtualisation of the servers and storage virtualisation, and the implementation of a SAN (Storage Area Network). Within the solution stack below these major infrastructure projects, systems have been introduced for storage and management, internet security and document management, providing cost benefits to the business and service enhancements to users at the desktop. During Danny O Connor s tenure the most important change to come on stream is the Atlanta DR (Disaster Recovery) solution. This uses locally deployed CDP (Continuous Data Protection) devices in conjunction with offsite data replication to Atlanta s data centre to provide the capability to recover systems to operational capability very quickly. 2.

4 Previously we had a recovery suite ready to go in Stratford with redundant racks of equipment and 50 desks set aside. Maintained at full readiness, realistically, it would have taken about 1 day to switch over from our City location, says O Connor. The Atlanta Technology Back in 60 DR proposition is an undertaking that a business can return to operational status in as little as an hour from when the problem is reported. This can be done whether the issue centres on one important file, the failure of hardware, the inability to access your entire data set or denial of access to premises. This has huge benefits when we are looking at IT operations and our ability to deliver for customers from the perspective of risk management, says O Connor. Using their hosting infrastructure Atlanta can reinstate systems and deliver services to practically any geographical location we find convenient. At the moment, if we do have a worst case scenario, then this would be split between a centralised temporary office site and home offices. O Connor says: When we look at it from the point of view of the revenue we generate from our core business, this makes business sense. The legal industry bills its fee earners by the hour. With the Atlanta Back in 60 SLA we stand to lose about 50 hours if things go badly wrong. Under the old DR system this would have equated to at least 400. It s now far more robust and we have peace of mind. This is reinforced in an annual test where we simulate an outage and Atlanta bring our virtual severs and data up in their data centre on hosted infrastructure. The legal industry bills its fee earners by the hour. With the Atlanta Back in 60 SLA we stand to lose about 50 hours if things go badly wrong. Under the old DR system this would have equated to at least 400. It s now far more robust and we have peace of mind. Results After 18 months or so of working with Atlanta, O Connor is candid in his evaluation of the service provider s performance. Across the different areas of specialist support, like Cisco, virtualised server, storage and network, Atlanta support and extend the capabilities of our internal team. I ve seen the implementation of new projects, the carrying out of planned 3.

5 maintenance, and responses to situations where things go wrong. In the first two cases Atlanta showed good vision and planning that kept disruption to a minimum. But it s when things go wrong that you learn the most. An interesting example is the virtual server VMware upgrade. This was a planned upgrade where things didn t go as smoothly as anticipated. We encountered problems with the SAN that necessitated out of hours fixing, something that was beyond contract. Their core engineers know the system inside out, and this gives great confidence. It was a case of rolling up sleeves and working with VMware s engineers to fix the problems. Atlanta has retained its position as Sackers IT partner for around 12 years, and in that time there have been a number of IT managers. There is no sponsor within Sackers that favours Atlanta, says O Connor. It seems that time and again, whoever is responsible for IT here chooses to retain Atlanta as the technology partner. From my point of view it is a merit based business decision. I can t see that it was anything different for my predecessors. It s healthily competitive if you are in the marketplace looking to purchase new technology solutions or move to alternative suppliers. For many it might seem a bewildering choice, but it can be very simple to make a good decision. As Danny O Connor observes, Atlanta has a customer focused attitude and adopts the aim of exceeding performance targets. I won t have any qualms if they continue to perform. 4.

6 About Atlanta Technology Atlanta Technology Ltd has advised, supplied and supported advanced technology solutions aimed at enabling growth and adding value to businesses since Disaster Recovery Your servers operational on our infrastructure in 60 minutes Our dynamic team concentrates on simplifying technology from the business customer s perspective. As a company we share a vision of harnessing complex technology, creating defined solutions and communicating business benefits. Atlanta Technology s corporate-class Cloud Computing environment is built for business, securing data and applications on remote servers at top class data centre facilities. This corporate-class Cloud Computing environment is an integral part of the vision we have been developing since Our customers include private and public sector organisations including those that are subject to strict regulation and governance such as financial institutions and housing trusts. Cloud Computing Enterprise class server infrastructure without capital investment Storage & Server Virtualisation Rationalise your infrastructure to provide a more flexible and dynamic platform General Enquires: +44 (0) Sales Freephone: (UK only) Fax: +44 (0) enquiries@atlantatechnology.co.uk Web: Atlanta Technology Ltd 20a Brownlow Mews London WC1N 2LA Atlanta Technology Ltd UK Reg VAT Reg Registered Address: 47 Mount Pleasant, London, WC1X 0EA Content extraction and reuse is forbidden without the prior written authorisation of Atlanta Technology Ltd. 5.