A genuinely different firm
Baillie Gifford manages funds for some of the world’s leading institutions from its base in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is one of the UK’s largest independent investment management firms. Their ‘genuine difference’ is the fact that they place their customers’ interests above all else; the result of an independence whereby there are no conflicting distractions from outside shareholders or other forms of business.
Operating in the areas of Pension Funds, Investment Trusts, Charities and Retail Products, the Company has established an enviable reputation for client service and integrity and in addition to long list of blue chip clients in the UK, also has a significant client base in the US, Canada, and Japan.
The company attributes its success very much to the high quality talented individuals it attracts and retains, believing that the stability and continuity of their personnel is a key factor towards ensuring long-term success for the firm and it’s clients’ investments.
IT = innovation technology
As Baillie Gifford’s corporate brochure states, the Company “prides itself on being at cutting edge of new technology” and this is something reiterated by Richard McGrail, their head of IT: “Our systems are world-class, no question. It is one of the most exciting features about the firm, that such a high priority is placed on technology.” A heavy reliance upon bespoke in-house developed systems means that the computer applications are tailored precisely to the firm’s needs, ensuring that customers receive tangible service benefits as a result of intelligent deployment of IT innovation. Baillie Gifford were early adopters of pre-trade restriction checking, centralised dealing, STP and secure client extranets on the internet, amongst other things.
Business risk, a business priority
Many organisations are familiar with the mantra that investments in technology really ought to be matched by investments to ensure their availability – hence the provision of disaster recovery services. But some are less clear that such measures ought to extend to the business using the technology, which is after all a means to an end, as people tend to do business with people. Unsurprisingly, Baillie Gifford knows the value of managing business risk and its brochure unequivocally states: “This is a subject which we take very seriously at Baillie Gifford – we have developed a comprehensive strategy which addresses the risks to our business.”
This sentiment pervades from the top down, as Alex Callander, joint Senior Partner and CEO stated: “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.”
A week may be a long time in politics, but ten years is an eternity in IT. During that period the business world has inherited the Internet and its attendant permutations, email, globalisation, 24/7 operations, technological deployment on a previously unimaginable scale and a sophisticated and ever-demanding internal and external user base. No small challenge for an organisation determined to secure business resumption as quickly as possible should the need arise. However in 1994, Baillie Gifford embarked upon this process by appointing SunGard Availability Services (formerly Safetynet PLC and then Guardian iT) as its business continuity partner.
A timeline to information availability – key milestones
“Baillie Gifford’s commitment to ensuring the continuation of its business has been a decade long pursuit, taking the Company from basic IT disaster recovery provision to an ethos of information availability,” explained McGrail. Today, each business unit or technology function is supported by the solution that ensures the right response in the right timeframe. Alison Hutton, a Senior Manager at Baillie Gifford, has worked with McGrail to ensure that the non-IT side of continuity has also evolved and improved in a similar way that of IT: “Ensuring that other key business factors have been totally integral to the firm’s business continuity planning has held a strong focus from the very start.”
Key milestones towards this achievement included:
- 1994: Baillie Gifford implements its first real disaster recovery provision by taking out a PC LAN Recovery contract, then based at Dunfermline, for the recovery of five systems, which include the accounting application Icon. The contract also includes provision for 40 personnel (representing about 15% of the Company’s total staff). At this stage, the Company decides a 48-hour restore time is acceptable to the business.
- 1995: Fully aware that stable doors require locking before the horses bolt, Baillie Gifford invests in VIGIL Environmental Monitoring to enhance resilience within its computer rooms. VIGIL is set up to monitor for power failures and temperature fluctuations as well as to detect smoke/fire and water ingress, thereby providing early detection and notification of pending situations, that - if left undetected – could lead to invocation.
- 1995-9: Between 1995 and 1999, the number of people and servers supported increases steadily such that 75 users would now work from the Recovery Centre, should that be necessary. In addition, the systems restore process becomes more complicated as the company deploys new applications – including Microsoft Exchange Server, an Oracle database and a new STP implementation (Baillie Gifford demonstrated characteristic innovation by being one of the first organisations in the UK to adopt STP). Unsurprisingly perhaps, the restore process includes the integration of these distinct systems. Despite this, by the end of the year, restore times had reduced to 36 hours.
- 1999: In August VIGIL is superseded by VIGIL Plus to provide improved breadth, scope and accuracy of service. Later in the year, to ensure the robustness of its systems following a Millennium compliance programme, Baillie Gifford conducts a verification exercise, using Dunfermline as an offsite replica of its systems. The test is a complete success and the Company looks forward to the new Millennium with confidence.
2000: With the New Year comes the resolution that the Company’s business continuity strategy has to move forward to consider improvements in how the business might be run ‘as usual’ in a disaster scenario. According to McGrail: “The partners were strongly in favour and we were able to embark on the next phase of development.” Alex Callander recalls: “We felt it was no longer enough to manage our clients assets on a care and maintenance basis after a disaster. We wanted to be able to provide as high a level of service as possible”.
- As a result, Baillie Gifford increases its workplace and technology provision by almost double, such that 120 users, 15 servers and 30 applications will now be recovered in the event of interruption – with levels of integration becoming even more complex.
- Over time McGrail observes that increasing uptake and deployment of technology within the company, coupled with globalisation, is shrinking the backup window. In addition, he is keen to adopt new ways to enhance the efficiency and cost effectiveness of data storage. To this end, a contract to address these issues is taken out, and serves to reduce restore times further.
- During this year, the Recovery Centre is relocated to larger premises based at Edinburgh.
- 2002: In 2002, the Company undertakes a weeklong enterprise-wide business continuity exercise in order to thoroughly test its continuity arrangements. Mobilising two thirds of personnel and putting the management team through its paces, the exercise also delivers a thorough test of the IT infrastructure. Although pleased with the test’s result, McGrail feels there is still clearly the challenge of finding a way to deliver ever-decreasing recovery timescales in the context of a more demanding business and IT environment.
- 2003: To this end, McGrail determines to put in place a holistic solution with differing levels of complexity and restore times according to the priority of the business functions in question. He explains: “We were aware that the size and complexity of our IT recovery was increasing year on year and we were beginning to struggle to recover it all in an acceptable timeframe. The pressure on the IT staff to recover systems like Exchange and Oracle very quickly was intense, because staff wanted to be in contact with clients and brokers, and also to be fully aware of their clients’ market positions.” As a result a co-location space is added to the range of services SunGard provides. This houses a number of mirrored servers, thereby taking the key aspects of Baillie Gifford’s IT recovery strategy into the realms of high availability. This is coupled with another rise in Workplace Recovery provision to 155 user positions (or 40% of the workforce) as well as SunGard’s decision to move support to Livingston, which delivers greater opportunities for service expansion and Recovery Centre enhancement.
One decade later…
As a result of these steps, nine years after taking out its first recovery contract, Baillie Gifford can claim to have dramatically reduced restore times for traditional recovery, as well as achieving real-time solutions for its most critical functions. The percentage of personnel to be supported from the Recovery Centre has risen to 40%, whilst technological advance enables the rest of the workforce to login and access all mission critical systems from designated home environments. Evidence of Baillie Gifford’s ongoing commitment to attaining the right solution at the right time in order to ensure high levels of service to its customer base.
The current situation
By working with SunGard and other organisations, Baillie Gifford has recently enhanced their business continuity capability by the installation of a high availability solution within the Livingston Recovery Centre, some 20km from their HQ and Data Centre in Edinburgh. Using replication software, and utilising high capacity LAN Extension circuits, Baillie Gifford have integrated the Recovery Centre with their own LAN, allowing rapid recovery from either an individual server failure or wholesale loss of their building in Edinburgh.
As McGrail explained: “We were looking for a solution which would safeguard our key services, both in a day to day contingency and a full disaster recovery situation. We have worked closely with SunGard and others to construct our solution, and by centralising all of the comms, we have managed to do it at very reasonable cost.” Baillie Gifford can now recover their five or six most important systems within fifteen minutes of a problem, and can then set about restoring the rest of the services from their electronic vaulting service. “Now that we have the high availability solution in place, we can provide the key systems almost immediately and recover the next tier of applications in a less pressured environment,” concluded McGrail.