BBS, an IT service provider, has deployed its Doyenz powered “DataAngel” service at QEB, a leading set of barristers chambers. DataAngel is helping to protect file servers and critical case management systems at QEB, a chamber that specialises in all aspects of family law from its offices in the Temple, London.
“We have offered our old DataAngel Service for several years and have many clients across the South East,” explains Gary Duckman, senior technical consultant for BBS, “We are continually evaluating ways to improve the service and had been impressed with the solution from Doyenz in the US. However, it was the opening of the Doyenz London data centre last year that prompted us to switch over as localised data storage is critical to many of our customers.”
With the new Doyenz powered service, DataAngel customers like QEB benefit from both an onsite local backup of entire server images and data files complete with offsite backup into the Doyenz rCloud. DataAngel can now restore virtual production server environments in less than fifteen minutes by hosting virtualised images of the local production server in a remote cloud. In the event of an outage, Barristers and Clerks at QEB can gain immediate access to their complete server environment, including data and critical case management applications through the internet.
“In terms of cost, our customers like QEB are typically paying roughly 17% less than our old service and the cost per GB for offsite data has dropped by 55%,” explains Duckman, “The more flexible licensing relationship we have with Doyenz means that customers are just charged on a monthly basis for what they use with only a twelve month minimum contract term to avoid expensive long term lock-ins.”
Although thankfully QEB has not had to invoke a real full site disaster recovery, according to Senior Clerk Ivor Treherne, “The capability to test that our business continuity position is working as planned is absolutely vital for us. With this service, we have done our best to ensure that our staff can carry on working in the event of an IT outage and that all our data remains safe, secure and accessible.”
Like many chambers, QEB has an IT support requirement for backup and data recovery. “DataAngel provides us with a service to meet these core requirements without needing to allocate internal IT resources to manage backup tapes or the archiving of electronic files – from our prospective, it allows us to focus on our core roles and not IT.”
Based on the average salary for IT staff in London, the BBS DataAngel support service equates to 2 days a month of costs but delivers a 24 hour-a-day monitoring, helpdesk and DR response service, “At a time when many of our customers are looking to save on OPEX, our move to Doyenz will help us to meet these demands with a solution that is both technically better delivered at a lower cost.,” Duckman added.