Clients' Case Studies

While the organisations’ focus has not changed in almost a century, the way in which it manages the raising of money, administration of aid and work all over the world certainly has. Technology plays a large part in any modern charity and Save the Children UK is no different. The organisation relies on its technology and IT infrastructure to run in the same way as any modern global corporation. 

 

Databarracks, the UK’s leading online backup and data recovery provider, has been selected by Save the Children UK to help them manage their data and protect it in the event of disaster. Currently, Databarracks is protecting almost 20TB of data for Save the Children UK, spanning finance systems, communication, numerous databases, and applications.

 

“To manage our IT systems and to ensure they are up and running for all our staff is a time consuming job, so to find a service provider that completely managed our data lifecycle, from backup to recovery and from live data to archival, was imperative. Databarracks has done a great job providing us with a service that is tailored to our needs” said Save the Children UK’s Server Manager, Duncan Wood.

 

James Watts, Save the Children UK’s account manager, says:  “By keeping data safe for Save the Children UK, Databarracks has been provided an opportunity to help ensure this great and worthy organisation stays in operation no matter what disaster may befall their own IT systems. Everyone at Databarracks feels immensely proud to have been selected by Save the Children UK and to be playing a part in protecting such a prestigious organisation”
Save the Children is the world’s independent children’s charity. We’re outraged that millions of children are still denied proper healthcare, food, education and protection. We’re working flat out to get every child their rights and we’re determined to make further, faster changes. How many? How fast? It’s up to you. For further information about our work please visit www.savethechildren.org.uk

 

Operating from purpose built premises in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the business employs over 200 highly trained staff and its state of the art call centre; web-based reservations platform and newly re-launched website together handle over 2 million telephone calls and over 12 million web visits each year.

It is the efficiency of this online service, which has resulted in a substantial increase in the use of the website, with 65% more people booking online in 2009 than in 2008, and web sales now making up over half of total volume. The UK self-catering market is exhibiting strong growth and Hoseasons bookings are up to 30% ahead of last year. This demonstrates the powerful appeal to customers in the current economic climate for holidays which offer the combination of quality, value, freedom and flexibility which are key features of the Hoseasons range.

The dramatic increase in demand this year and the increasing dependence on technology and the web in the company’s business processes prompted an urgent review of Hoseasons’ back-up and disaster recovery operations, as a precaution against any catastrophic system failures. Emphasis was placed heavily on technological advancements to remove any possibility for human error and to increase reliability.

The consensus at Hoseasons was that there was a need to improve on its existing back-up system, based on weekly offsite tape backups . The business decided that a seven day Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for booking databases and e-mail data was unacceptable and therefore sought out an efficient automated method of moving data offsite. Of vital importance to Hoseasons in selecting a supplier for the new system was the inherent security of sensitive customer data. Key among the required criteria in this respect was a military standard level of encryption (AES) to ensure that offsite copies of data were never stored in a readable format. (Databarracks offer a minimum of 128 bit AES encryption as standard)

In this and other required criteria Databarracks were successful in rising to the challenges of Hoseasons’ stringent brief, which also demanded an exceptionally high level of daily reporting as a core feature of the service.  

Chris Read, Head of IT Operations at Hoseasons, said of the company’s review: “having looked around in the market place we chose Databarracks as our online backup supplier because they were very responsive to our needs and offered us a bespoke solution that absolutely fitted our requirements. Our data is now extracted overnight and we have complete visibility of the success of the transfer. With the service now completely installed, tested and bedded in for over 6 months, we have the security of our data as complete as we specified it. We know that if we need to recover our business-critical systems, whether in-house or to another location, we will have readily available access to up to date backup data 24/7/365.”

Stemcor Holdings Limited, the world’s largest independent steel trader, has chosen Databarracks, the leading provider of managed online backup and virtual disaster recovery services, to backup business critical data spread around 4 continents. After only 2 months, 25 of Stemcor’s trading locations have their data automatically backed up to Databarracks’ data centre.

Since its formation in 1951, Stemcor has grown to be the 4^th largest private company in the United Kingdom with a turnover exceeding £5billion. As well as trading and shipping steel and raw materials, the company provides marketing, finance and logistics services to the global steel industry and was one of the pioneers in the industry to capitalise on online steel trading systems. Steel is one of the most common materials that we come into contact with every day. With a trading volume of over 20 million metric tons a year, the likelihood is that you are never more than a few metres away from steel that has been supplied by Stemcor.

Stemcor IT efforts involve cooperation between the offices worldwide, acceleration of the information flow and improvement on the availability of information to assure the realization of all business opportunities. In this scenario, their backup solution is the backbone of a structure built to provide availability, resilience and fast recovery time for terabytes of business critical data.

Although Stemcor looked for the best option on the market when they first sought an online backup solution, the results didn’t seem to please. “We have been using what we considered as top breed technology to back up our critical data, however we were limited to backing up only 10 of our sites as the costs for growing our storage footprint was inhibitive, to say the least” - Steve Burkett, Network Administrator for Stemcor Holdings

 Although using the same technology as their previous managed service provider, Databarracks have deployed a complete backup structure for Stemcor, allowing for the management of the whole information lifecycle of their data and a solution which now covers 25 of their global locations.

“By using all technology capabilities of an award winning software we were able to use a better compression, archiving tools and retention rules that will keep Stemcor’s data storage space recyclable and easy to manage” , says Preet Ramanuj, Sales Executive for Databarracks.

“Databarracks has proved that is not just the technology that matters when you think about data security. Their level of service and knowledge of their product capabilities played a pivotal part which really impressed us about their service provision. We have 24/7 technical support available, assisted configuration of system, local storage copies for fast restores and double the amount of sites being backed up for a cheaper deal. To know that there will be no extra charges for restoration, support assistance, software updates, etc. makes it a winning case on the financial front as well”, says Kim Richards, IT Technical Manager for Stemcor .

How Domino’s keep their data always available

It is amazing what you can achieve with $500 in your pocket, a little bit of imagination and a good deal of hard work; a fact that didn’t get away from Tom Monaghan when he opened the first Dominos Pizza restaurant in Ypsilanti, Michigan in 1960. In fact, the three dots on the Dominos logo stand for the three restaurants that he had originally planned to open. It was because of his pioneering approach to a new way of expanding his business, called franchising, that today there are more than 8,000 Dominos stores across the world.

In the UK Dominos has more than its fair share of the pizza market and a large slice of that is managed by Surinder and Kay Kandola of Skgroup through their 52 Dominos stores. Skgroup’s 1,300 employees orchestrate the production and delivery of some 45,000 pizzas every single day. Managing this scale of operation across so many individual sites means that they depend on their IT infrastructure to manage accounting, payroll, and other administrative functions while they concentrate on running the expanding business.

“I rely on my IT systems being there constantly, if I lost data it would be devastating and potentially very dangerous to my business. I chose Databarracks to provide me with a fully managed online backup and data recovery service because we just don’t have the time to worry about backing up to tape every night and ensuring that the tapes are taken offsite,” Kay says.

In December of 2007 Skgroup's decision to outsource their data protection proved to be wise, especially when they began replacing their Sage enterprise accounts server. The server migration had to be completed quickly and Skgroup turned to Databarracks to restore their old server into the new hardware. An engineer was duly dispatched with the data late on Friday to Skgroup's head office in Surrey and the server was restored onto the new hardware without interruption to the business. 

“I have always been thrilled with the level of service I receive from Databarracks,” Kay says. “With everything from updates and minor restores of lost data to the software migration episode, they are knowledgeable and reliable. I put a lot of trust in Databarracks so I can rest assured knowing that my data is safe and that I have the support I need when I need it. This means that our staff and I can spend more time living up to Dominos motto ‘Sell more pizza, have more fun!’”

When staff from AEGIS venture into IT Manager Jeremy Moeder’s office at their London headquarters after a data loss incident, they always find reassurance in Jeremy as they put on a brave face in hopes of retrieving their lost files. “I perform minor restores nearly every day, and still, people are always amazed how I have already started recovering their lost files before they have finished explaining to me what happened."

Before settling on Databarracks as his Backup provider, Jeremy experimented with tapes as well as other smaller online backup solutions. Generally, other solutions Jeremy evaluated tended to be insufficient; often hitting storage limits, failing, taking too long, being unreliable, and all around just not providing the perfect fit for AEGIS’ Enterprise level backup needs.

“Databarracks is the best total package for online backup. The Arxcis Asigra software is a leader on the market because it is more professional and user friendly. The automated archiving and MLR features as well as remote connection to the data centre have really helped to make minor restores quick and easy. Plus, because the software is fully automated and runs in the background, it is virtually unnoticeable and allows work to go on without interruption,” Jeremy comments.

 “Databarracks acts as if they are my team, and monitor everything to do with the backups for me. Their assistance gives me more time to concentrate on additional IT matters. They do all the driving, I just sit back and watch!”

A telephone call Jeremy received one day informed him that users at AEGIS were unable to login to their email. Once the problem had been investigated, it was revealed that one of the three disks in the email server’s RAID, had failed, then, in turn, each of the remaining disks failed as well. In trying to repair itself, the entire array had been corrupted, which instigated the problem.

Jeremy contacted Dell, asking for new drives, which were delivered by 7pm that night. Once the drives had arrived, the rebuilding of the server commenced, though the task was not completed until nearly 12 hours later. Jeremy endured some gruelling work that night, as he alternated work and sleep to complete the rebuilding process. In the morning, once the server was rebuilt and ready for the data to be restored, one of Databarracks’ senior engineers was onsite with a hard copy of the data to be transferred to the new server.

“The Databarracks’ technician was fantastic! He stayed with me through the entire restore process. The engineer was available every step of the way. We were able to restore the database, while keeping the e-mails functional. It was the perfect solution, as everything went ahead smoothly and we achieved complete recovery,” recalls Jeremy.

 

Given that AEGIS is the leader in the industry of security and risk management, and that their data is the lifeblood of their organisation, due to it containing valuable details used in their various analysis procedures, it is understandable that they would expect their data to be treated with the same discretion and integrity that their clients demand of them. Databarracks helps AEGIS uphold the maintenance of accurate and complete records they require.

Emails, which suffered the brunt of the impact when their RAID went down, are vital to AEGIS. The communication channel created by email unifies all players participating in various operations, including clients, potential clients, countless employees on-location worldwide, and those stationed in the company’s offices in London, Kabul, Baghdad, Manama, and Washington DC. Much historical data about events and issues as well as specifications for current projects are contained in emails between AEGIS and their clients. Losing access to these emails would eliminate the ability to review these records for reference when the need arose. 

“Having an encryption key that only I hold ensures that my data is just being stored and is unable to be accessed by anyone else, which lets me rest easy that confidential information will remain private. In addition, by keeping the data in an unbeatable location, like the Bunker, I am convinced that our data is in one of the most secure places it could possibly be,” Jeremy comments. The acknowledgement of the Bunker, the ISO 27001 certified Tier 4 ex-NATO bunker located outside the M25, where Databarracks hosts clients’ vaults, adds merit to the security of the solution.