VIRTUALISATION DELIVERS BUSINESS CONTINUITYFOR SCOTTISH BUILDING SOCIETY
Scotland’s first ever Building Society started life in March 1848 as the EdinburghProperty Investment Company, changing its name to Scottish Building Society in 1929.
Since those early days, there has been a substantial increase in the number of customers and range of products offered,matching Scotland’s developing social and economic needs, whilst remaining true to the original tradition of thrift and careful money-management.
A traditional mutual Building Society, theScottish Building Society offers mortgages and savings accounts to customers through six main branches and a network of agency offices throughout Scotland.
The Society decided to review its business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements to upgrade systems with the most robust solution available that would allow for replication of systems at analternative location and ensure a quicker failover response in the event of a major systems failure.
Castle Computer Services recommended VMware virtualisation as the most flexible, robust solution. VMware provides rapid, reliable and cost effective business continuity. It also delivers server consolidation and enables disaster recovery.
Using VMware the Scottish Building Society was able to replace the existing Hewlett Packard system in Edinburghwith an IBM system and then re-utilise the old hardware to enhance the existing DR functionality by creating a ‘replicated’off-site disaster recovery data centre atthe Society’s Business Continuity location based in Livingston*. Now if the Edinburgh HQ office were to experience a serious failure (all systems, including data and applications), the recovery time is reduced from hours to minutes. The result is a robus teffective disaster recovery site that also provides an important audit trail for FSA compliance.
Alison Quilter, IT Manager, ScottishBuilding Society, said:
“As a financial services organisation witha wide network of branch and agency offices it’s essential that we maintain an IT infrastructure which supports the Society’soverall business strategy and also ensures stability for the continuity management ofthe Society’s systems. The VMware solution has achieved that goal for us. We have a cost effective setup which ensures that inthe event of a system failure in Edinburgh we can quickly failover to our replicated DR site, maintaining continuity of service to our customers and staff."
Alan Quinn, Managing Director,Castle Computer Services said:
“We recognised the need for a secure,flexible solution for the Scottish BuildingSociety and they now have in place a best practice proven business continuity system that will also deliver long-term cost savings.”
Contact usFor more information pleasecontact Castle ComputerServices on 0845 230 1314or email info@castle-cs.com
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