Neighbouring housing providers, Peaks & Plains Housing Trust in Macclesfield and Staffordshire Housing Group in Stoke-on-Trent, have joined forces to share back-up services with help from Keylogic.
Instead of paying for separate back-up services from suppliers that were charging over £25,000 per year, the two housing providers decided to share resources, services and recovery space to create the perfect solution that would not only eliminate these costs but also improve the speed of recovery and increase the number of recovery points.
Working with Keylogic, they embarked on a project that involved implementing the Dell AppAssure software across each corporate network, with data replicated between the two sites in almost real-time. They also added a local on-site backup facility that could be used in the event of a partial loss of infrastructure or data.
Simon Penaluna, assistant director of ICT, Peaks & Plains Housing Trust, said, “This project has been a great success. Not only has it brought a real commercial benefit by reducing costs for both organisations to the point where it paid for itself before the end of the first year, but we have also found that working so closely with Staffordshire Housing has allowed us to build relationships to work together on other projects in future.”
Darren Penny, ICT service delivery manager, Staffordshire Housing Association, said, “After the loss of our parent company’s head office due to a fire and having to go through a real DR scenario, the importance of finding a good partner for this project was key. This collaborative project has not only given us assurances over the integrity of our information, it has also met key business objectives such as value for money.”
