BUSINESSITPS is an ICT solution provider delivering data storage and security, disaster recovery and unified communications services for more than 400

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CUSTOMER PROFILEIndustry: IT servicesCompany: ITPSTurnover: £10 million

ITPS provides more effi cient and cost-effective disaster recovery services with CA ARCserve solutions

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

BUSINESSITPS is an innovative, fast growing ICT solution provider delivering data storage and security, disaster recovery and unified communications services for more than 400 clients throughout the UK.

CHALLENGETo deliver cost-effective and efficient backup disaster recovery services to its clients, ITPS needed to standardise its tools and processes, and remove the reliance on non-IT staff at client sites for running backups.

SOLUTIONITPS has implemented a range of integrated CA Recovery Management solutions that enable seamless automated data replication and backup across multiples client sites and systems to a centralised datacentre.

BENEFITBy standardising and simplifying its disaster recovery services, ITPS will be able to deliver better quality services to clients at a lower cost, reduce risk and facilitatebusiness growth.

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ITPSIITPPPS

BusinessHelping clients maximise ICT budgets with innovative services and solutions Established in 2000, ITPS provides competitive and innovative ICT solutions and support for 400 SMEs (small to medium-sized enterprises) across a variety of industries. The company operate as an extension of a clients in-house IT team using its fl exible ICT resources to complement their clients own resource covering special projects, peaks of demand, sickness and holidays. In addition, ITPS provide data storage, telecommunications solutions, hosting, virtualisation, BCP, disaster recovery, data security, network security and cabling services.

Headquartered in Gateshead in the north of England, ITPS employs 90 IT professionals and has a turnover in excess of £10m per annum. ITPS are passionate about what they do and with communication at the core of its business their customers appreciate the personal touch. The services it provides are fl exible, reliable and responsive, enabling its clients to maximise their ICT budgets and focus on their business objectives. ITPS are continually working with their clients to eliminate unnecessary costs by offering a one-stop shop for their IT and telecommunication solutions.

Since the company was founded, it has experienced an annual increase in turnover of £1 million and an impressive customer retention rate of over 90%. The business is focused on maintaining this steady growth over the next few years.

ChallengeProviding cost-effective and low-risk disaster recovery servicesITPS’s fully managed disaster recovery and business continuity services are an integral part of its portfolio, offering to drive clients costs down, while reducing the time it takes for them run the backup process. As Paul Anderson, Technical Service Director at ITPS, explains, “As we expand, we have an increasing number of clients with ever more complex disaster recovery (DR) requirements. For many SMEs, it is not cost-effective to host their own DR sites so they need a reliable alternative. By working with us, they can take advantage of our highly available datacentre and host their backup records offsite.”

“Our staff had to be trained on many different tools and use various interfaces to manage backups.”Paul AndersonTechnical Service Director, ITPS

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ITPS

ITPS was using a multitude of backup solutions and different processes to meet each client’s unique requirements. As the company grew, this decentralised approach became increasingly complex and costly to maintain.

“Our staff had to be trained on a number of different tools and use various interfaces to manage backups and recovery for each client,” comments Anderson. This was not only ineffi cient but meant ITPS had to invest in numerous skill sets, which added to the operating cost model for its DR and business continuity services.

Maintaining a consistent service was also proving a challenge, as Anderson explains, “We found it diffi cult to manage the backup process at client locations without on-site IT expertise as we were reliant on non-IT staff to verify backups and change tapes, which on occasion led to problems.”

In order to address these challenges and simplify DR management, ITPS was keen to standardise on a single solution for all its backup and recovery services.

SolutionCentralised backup services for a diverse client baseFollowing a comprehensive evaluation of the tools available and a proof of concept exercise,ITPS implemented CA ARCserve Backup, CA ARCserve D2D, CA ARCserve Replication and CA ARCserve High Availability. Anderson comments, “The CA Technologies solutions offered seamless integration, comprehensive functionality and the fl exibility to suit the needs of all our clients.”

The solutions are steadily being introduced across ITPS’s client base, and are currently used for around 10 companies, which is expected to rise signifi cantly in the next six months.

Despite clients varying from international organisations with hundreds of servers to small local companies with a handful of devices and differing data availability requirements, ITPS is able to meet each client’s individual needs thanks to the fl exibility of the CA Technologies solutions.

“The CA Technologies solutions work seamlessly across our clients heterogeneous environments, regardless of whether they are virtual or physical,” comments Anderson. ITPS backs up data from a range of systems, including Microsoft Exchange, SAP ERP and Oracle databases.

One key client the CA Technologies solutions are being used for is a major air cargo company. “We provide comprehensive DR capabilities for the client, which involves replicating business-critical data from the company’s airport-based sites to an ITPS Tier III datacentre,” explains Anderson. “From this central facility, we can remotely manage backups to a tape library, which means staff working at the airports are no longer required to manage the process themselves.”

With replication and backup processes fully automated, the DR team at ITPS are alerted to any problems to enable them to react quickly to ensure its clients backups are completed on schedule.

The CA Technologies solutions also provide comprehensive reports, which are passed on to clients to help them prove compliance with internal policies and external regulations relating to DR capabilities.

Benefi tBetter quality services at lower costUsing the CA Recovery Management solutions enables ITPS to provide robust backup and DR offerings that are not only cost and time effi cient, but also user friendly and fully scalable to meet their clients’ needs.

Anderson comments, “By deploying an integrated, best-of-breed solution, we have decreased staff training requirements as well as the administrative burden.”

By simplifying its replication, backup and recovery processes, ITPS will be able to:

• Drive clients costs and overheads down, while delivering a better quality of service

• Reduce the volume of data clients backup

• Help clients meet their compliance requirements

• Minimise clients down time due to rapid data recovery

• Facilitate business growth and reduce risk with repeatable best practice DR processes.

Anderson comments, “Although we have only just started to rollout the CA Recovery Management solutions to our clients, we are already starting to see the benefi ts, such as greater effi ciency and lower costs. This will not only enable our business to be more profi table and support growth, but also help our clients to achieve their IT goals.”

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