Baillie Gifford
“A major part of Baillie Gifford’s strategy is to ensure that our clients consistently receive the high levels of service they deserve. We believe that our client servicing is second to none, and that includes making all reasonable endeavours to continue to deliver that service, even in the event of a disaster befalling the firm’s premises or major systems. We have taken Business Continuity very seriously over the last ten years and have steadily improved our recovery planning and capability to the point where we feel we could continue business as usual quite quickly after all but the worst form of incident.” More>
British Medical Journal
On 7 July last year, the British Medical Journal (BMJ), based at the British Medical Association’s headquarters in Tavistock Square, London, found itself at the centre of the terrorist attacks on the city. The London bus bomb exploded directly outside the offices of the BMJ, resulting in denial of access to the premises in the wake of the bombing. In the hours, days and weeks that followed the bombings, the BMJ worked with SunGard Availability Services to ensure that the business was able to continue to function and to keep up its proud 160-year tradition of never failing to produce the weekly journal, despite having endured two world wars and various other difficulties associated with being located in central London. More>
Food and Drink Federation
A key function of FDF is to communicate with a range of domestic and international audiences, including Government, regulators, FDF members and the media. It is through this communication that FDF helps to ensure that the UK food and drink industry is kept informed about UK or EU regulatory matters, and that the industry’s position on food issues can be communicated.
For this reason, FDF decided that it needed to prepare for the rapid resumption of business in the event of a disaster, to ensure that this vital communication could take place.
As a relatively small organisation sustained by limited funding and membership fees, clearly FDF’s strategy to protect its data needed to be cost effective and not too time-consuming. More>
Gerling UK
Like many organisations, Gerling UK had an in-house backup regime, which served them well for many years. However, when the company underwent a period of considerable growth, it became clear that an alternative approach might be required. More>
Great Ormond Street Hospital
In 1998 the hospital took the practical and responsible decision of implementing a comprehensive data recovery plan to ensure continued provision of critical IT systems.
Broadly the IT in the hospital is used to run three essential functions, using large Sequent Hewlett Packard and ICL systems. The first is administration, which includes all the financial and logistical requirements of the hospital. More>
Irwin Mitchell
Irwin Mitchell has a very sound record in business continuity (BC) planning. It has worked with SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading supplier of Information Availability solutions, for several years to ensure that any disruption to its IT or telephony functions is minimised and that all data is kept securely. Irwin Mitchell has consistently been one of the first legal firms to gain accreditation for industry standards such as BS 7799 and ISO 27001. It is now working with SunGard to ensure that it is fully prepared for the new British Standard for business continuity management (BCM), BS 25999, which comes into play later in 2007.
On Monday 25th June, Irwin Mitchell’s Sheffield office, situated across two buildings in the centre of the city, were badly hit by the flooding. Fortunately, the flooding hit the building after the call centre had closed for the evening, but it was now essential for Irwin Mitchell and SunGard to ensure that normal services could be resumed the following morning. More>
James Galt
By Sunday morning, despite the best efforts of the emergency services, the second floor had collapsed. Much of the office equipment had been destroyed as a direct result of the fire itself – either as the building caved in, or from smoke damage – but the secondary effect of water damage as the fire was quenched also played its part. More>
Kingston Asset Finance Ltd
Kingston Asset collect money by standing order, cheques, etc and their core system (based in Cheam) monitors payments, so without the telephony system, core system and fax system there would be no trading. More>
Leicester City Council
The Council has always recognised the key role technology plays in helping it to provide a reliable service to the people of Leicester. This is reflected in the service level agreement the IT team has with all departments to maintain IT availability 24/7. It therefore works with SunGard Availability Services to ensure essential electronic information is always available to its 6,000 IT users. More>
Max Re
A leader in providing creative and competitive risk transfer solutions for clients in the property & casualty and life & annuity insurance markets. With offices in Bermuda and Ireland, e-mail is a mission-critical communication tool for daily business operations
“When we received the early warning of a hurricane, we quickly turned to EAS. We able to deployed EAS in less than an hour – well before the hurricane hit – protecting us from a potential business disaster.” More>
RGL LLP
RGL staff travel throughout the world on business, assisting clients on the ground in almost every continent. The 21 offices worldwide provide the extensive coverage and synergy necessary to support their commitment to quality and customer service. Any interruption to the business's e-mail function has immediate effect on RGL's staff and clients. RGL felt it was necessary to look into a solution that would protect this vital function. More>
Sainsbury's
Sainsbury’s is one organisation that appreciates the importance of business continuity (BC) management and Information Availability (IA) as a means to ensuring its presence in the marketplace and its ability to deliver on its stated aims and objectives. More>
Severn Trent Water
Severn Trent Water's customer base is made up of a number of utility organisations that run their operations 24x7. As a result, Severn Trent Water has to ensure it is available to provide its software solutions and support services to their clients, without interruption. A major client of Severn Trent Water had closed down one of its data centres and needed to ensure resilience in the event of a major incident affecting their other site. Severn Trent Water had a potential resource issue, which meant that the company would find it difficult to support the tests required to maintain its business continuity plan, as well as supporting day-to-day operations.
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University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire
The University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust manages three major hospitals, serving a population of more than a million. Established in 1992, it is now one of the largest hospital trusts in central England and employs 6,500 staff. The Trust’s mission is to provide a wide range of acute and specialist services and is recognised both nationally and internationally for its role in developing new treatments.
Part of the Trust’s mission is to continually improve both organisational effectiveness and clinical services, and it is increasingly reliant on IT to deliver this. It is therefore essential that the IT department can ensure that quality data is available 24/7, while maintaining patient confidentiality. More>