Challenge
To meet the increasing demands of managing 24 x7 applications, a workforce of over 150 people, as well as the need to manage continuously growing data, The Health Research Board were faced with either a further expensive investment in traditional hardware and technologies or to look at a cloud based alternatives due to the following:
- Existing Server Environment was end of life and needed to be replaced.
- The backup system was tape based and relied too much on manual intervention and also needed to be replaced.
- The current environment was not protected for Disaster Recovery and with HRB’s current
data growth they were running out of storage space. - The exchange server needed to be upgraded to the latest version and several of their
servers need to be upgraded to the latest operating systems.
Solution
A hybrid cloud infrastructure solution incorporating Office 365, cloud backup, smart cloud archiving, cloud storage and cloud disaster recovery.
- Hybrid cloud infrastructure refresh solution. We updated the servers to the latest operating system.
- A fully managed cloud back-up solution provided by Savenet
- An Email & File Cloud Archiving platform to include comprehensive archiving which enables reporting, data analysis, e-discovery and audit traceability
- Migration to Microsoft 365 which included the migration of 300 mailboxes
- Hybrid cloud disaster recovery solution fully managed by Savenet – with recovery points of less than 15 seconds and recovery times of less than 2 hours.
Results
- By adopting a mix of fully managed cloud technologies HRB are saving considerable amounts of time and money on IT infrastructure and personnel
- By moving Email to O365 there is one less server to backup and provide DR for
- The Cloud Email archiving solution provides a backup for O365 email plus a full e-discovery solution
- The cloud File archiving solution removes aged files from local storage moves them to the cloud to free up storage space and reduce backup sizes
- The new solution has dramatically improved protection against data loss
- All emails are now fully traceable and in a searchable GDPR Compliant archiving system
- No secondary DR site and hardware to manage, no dedicated hot site is required
- Backups, Replications and Restores are fully managed so the internal IT have more free time to focus on user support
“The HRB wanted to embrace the latest cloud technologies to provide the highest levels of system availability, scalability and resilience for our stakeholders while also providing value for money.
Savenet were able to take our wish list and turn it into reality. They took a unique approach for the solution design – they were the only company who put smart archiving and data management at the core of the new infrastructure. This helped to make the entire solution much more cost effective and simpler to manage. It keeps our backup and storage environments at a steady level whilst our low-cost cloud archive grows. Savenet were the only company who were able to provide such a breadth of cloud services – from backup and DR to archiving and Office 365.”
Martin Morgan
Director of Corporate Operations
Health Research Board
This type of managed hybrid cloud infrastructure refresh solution which encompasses,
Cloud Backup, Cloud Archiving, Cloud Disaster Recovery and Office 365 for email
is the first of its kind in the Public Sector and can be used as a roadmap to deliver real costs
savings from the cloud in the rest of the Public Sector.