ON THE RIGHT TRACK
ON THE RIGHT TRACK
From STORAGE Magazine
Vol 7, Issue 8 - November/December 2007
a London-based agency is minimising the risk to its business and clients by
implementing a business continuity solution across its entire operations
Proximity London, part of BBDO Worldwide and the Omnicom Group, is a leading
integrated marketing communications agency that manages both domestic and global
businesses as diverse as BBC licensing, Eurostar, Jim Beam whiskey, Volkswagen,
Save the Children, Shell and Yell.com.
From its eight-storey building in central London, Proximity provides clients
with a full range of creative services, including direct marketing, design,
copywriting, digital marketing, promotions, and general planning and strategic
marketing. Analysing customer behaviour plays an important role for several of
these services.
“Mobile phone companies need to plan marketing communications activities that
target customers before their 12-month contract periods expire,” explains
Richard Brumwell, technology services group director, Proximity London.
"By analysing several factors, including their spending habits, we plan various
activities with a view to preventing the customers' natural tendency to migrate
to another provider. The data spawned by this work is critical. It's our
lifeblood."
Protecting this client-sensitive data, and keeping the IT infrastructure up and
running, is vital. The risks go beyond lost revenue and productivity for
Proximity - they can impact the revenues and productivity of their clients. For
an agency that has spent years building a stellar reputation, the repercussions
could be incalculable.
About 70 people work in Proximity's data analytics department, farming enormous
databases that generate and analyse data, in order to model and predict customer
behaviour. "We have a very broad spectrum of IT disciplines supporting the
business and numerous applications running on our 300-plus PCs, laptops and
Macs," explains Brumwell.
"But of all the vital data that is generated by these applications, 80 per cent
of the volume is held by systems in the data analytics department."
Keeping regular back-up tapes offsite provides much of the data protection
Proximity needs. However, it was recently decided to analyse its entire IT
infra- structure and supporting services recovery plan. If a disaster struck,
there was no second site for staff to move to - and no way of maintaining
business continuity.
"To many companies, disaster-recovery planning only became a serious business
issue within the last ten years - the millennium bug probably started it. Today,
many of our clients insist we have a plan in place,” Brumwell explains. “It has
become a prerequisite to doing business - no plan equals no business. Sometimes
they even specify a business-recovery period in our contract and audit us twice
a year to ensure we’re complying."
As this demand for a business continuity plan grew, Proximity London decided to
consult with three vendors - NDR, Sun Guard and HP - about ways to minimise the
threats to its business.
After learning about Proximity’s requirements and objectives, HP proposed a
solution combining a number of services from its Business Continuity Services (BCS)
portfolio. The proposed solution comprised HP Business Continuity Consulting to
analyse, design, build and manage the project, and two offerings from HP
Business Recovery Services (BRS). First, the Business Recovery Core Service
provides a fully operational ‘ship-to-site’ IT infrastructure at a location of
choice, where rapid access to servers and storage is assured.
The second service, Office Recovery Centre, allows staff to move in to a fully
equipped temporary office at one of HP’s fixed recovery centres in the UK.
“After we had looked at the various proposals, it wasn't a difficult decision,"
says Brumwell. "The HP solution was head and shoulders above the others. This
credible, cost-effective solution was well thought out and their credentials
were verified by an excellent selection of reference sites. HP's expertise shone
through."
The contract provides 140 seats at either recovery centre, together with an
appropriate number of PCs for a period of up to 13 weeks. A full telephone
switch and communications capability is available, together with networking
connections. Meeting rooms, fax, copy and food services are included, as well
as secretarial assistance and shipping/ receiving services.
An annual disaster rehearsal, backed by expert on-site technical assistance, is
also part of the contract.
VITAL REASSURANCE
In the event of potential business disruption, Proximity simply notifies HP and
the service swings into action, with HP experts setting up suitable
arrangements. If the agency decides to relocate all or part of its business, a
number of its 'recovery team' - armed with any backup material - proceeds to the
specified recovery centre, ready to implement the procedures that have been
agreed.
HP typically aims to recover IT-supported business services for data centres
within 24 to 72 hours, which allows Proximity London to demonstrate high
resilience to its customers. With both the HP Business Recovery Services and its
own disaster-recovery plan in place, Proximity can reassure its clients that
essential business-critical data will be available.
For Proximity, the services and planning helps to minimise the estimated revenue
impact of £167,000 (Euros 244,000) per day, were the agency unable to recover
quickly in the event of disaster.
Now the agency knows that it can quickly deploy staff to a fully equipped
recovery centre to maintain essential services, which contributes to the
confidence and loyalty of customers, business partners and investors.
"We now have peace of mind, because - if anything did threaten our business - we
know that HP has put a quality solution in place,” concludes Brumwell.
“During our last rehearsal, some of our business processes had re-started within
12 hours and, in 34 hours, everything was running smoothly."
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