Client background
Severn Trent Water (STW), formerly Severn Trent Systems and part of the Severn Trent Plc Group, has been established for over 10 years. STW's specialist expertise in providing software and managed services for the utility industry, has progressed as new technologies become available, and as the needs of the industry advance. Today, STW's group comprises software and services geared towards making the most of the Internet and the technologies it has spawned, together with all the knowledge and experience gained over the past decade.
The business challenge
Severn Trent Water's customer base is made up of a number of utility organisations that run their operations 24x7. As a result, STW has to ensure it is available to provide its software solutions and support services to their clients, without interruption. A major client of STW had closed down one of its data centres and needed to ensure resilience in the event of a major incident affecting their other site. STW 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.
Consequently, Severn Trent Water needed a solution that would not only support its people and systems in the event of a disaster, but would provide a largely ‘managed’ service, minimising involvement from the STW team.
Why SunGard?
Given the ‘managed’ nature of its requirements, STW needed to find a supplier that it could rely on – and trust enough to be a key partner in its business continuity programme.
“SunGard had the knowledge and experience we required across all our platforms. Importantly, for us, it also had the resource available to support our programme effectively,” said Lisa Hill, disaster recovery co-ordinator for STW.
The solution
A solution was put in place whereby SunGard’s dedicated analysts are able to follow jointly developed procedures to recover OS/390 and OPC on the mainframe, HP-UX, Oracle and the Netbackup database on HP servers, Solaris and a Firewall on Sun servers, and NT4 and applications on numerous Intel servers. Currently most systems are recovered out of SunGard’s main data centre with some of the NT systems recovered in the local SunGard Workplace Recovery site.
The teams also provide hands-on recovery with dedicated SunGard second-level support, plus SunGard provides peripheral operators so that STW’s recovery media can be loaded.
Workplace Recovery space is available in the local SunGard site for the STW operations and support staff to work from.
In addition, STW has a ship-in option on some of the Intel servers, for use in the event of a server failure at its main data centre or the loss of one of the key remote sites.
Results
From a technical standpoint, STW’s solution for Technology and Workplace Recovery has been very successful and has been tested on numerous occasions. This has given STW the confidence that its recovery procedures are effective and will work in the event of an actual invocation.
The real benefit of this particular solution however, is in the way it operates. STW’s ‘managed’ approach has been successfully running for some time now. In fact, the solution was so successful, that SunGard developed it into service offerings available to other customers.
“This solution eased the burden on our existing technical staff, and reduced the need for additional headcount to carry out our continuity programme,” said Hill. “Now that our capacity has increased, we have the ability to manage the tests from a strategic point of view, but SunGard still carries out all the recoveries for us. This allows the majority of our technical staff to be free to carry on with their normal daily activities.”
“We’ve also used the expertise of SunGard’s Planning Solutions team to help develop our continuity strategy. We’ve regularly utilised the consultants for advice on best practices to help us develop our capabilities on an ongoing basis,” added Hill.
Next steps?
Electronic data links with external suppliers has become a critical factor in ensuring a full recovery service is provided. Development of the necessary procedures to ensure this is a seamless process in the event of an invocation is now complete. STW regularly undertakes fully integrated testing with customer involvement.
“At STW, business continuity is vitally important as we place a great deal of emphasis on service delivery for our customers. An arrangement of this ‘managed’ nature relies upon a strong relationship between the two companies involved. We’ve found SunGard team to have the necessary technical ability and their co-operation and flexibility has been exemplary. This has undoubtedly contributed enormously to the success of this programme,” commented Mike Price, business continuity manager for STW.