ALVEA Services Cloud Attached Storage was selected in response to Brodie & Stone’s need to consider alternative tape back-up, file and email access ahead of its Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 becoming obsolete in 2014. In late 2013 RnD Systems Integration, the marketing company’s existing supplier of IT infrastructure and support services, identified the opportunity for a cloud-based solution to improve the resiliency, longevity, disaster recovery and flexibility of the business’s IT systems. A proposal was submitted and the project signed off in December 2013.
From its Soho offices, Brodie & Stone operates a small team of specialist and highly experienced marketing and sales professionals, some of whom also work from home or are regularly on the road, visiting clients. Day-to-day business functions rely heavily on collaboration between its factory in Essex and head office and, in turn, with leading retailers including Boots, Superdrug, Tesco, Waitrose and ASDA. Proposal documents, product specifications and large artwork files often need to be shared or worked on remotely. While employees were, in the past, able to collaborate to some degree using Dropbox and email, the process was often cumbersome, unreliable, didn’t allow for file synchronisation and was vulnerable to security threats typical of any public cloud-based system.
“As a small, yet innovative business operating in a very competitive market, Brodie & Stone needs its IT solutions to support an increasingly mobile and flexible workforce, without compromising security,” said Leigh Stringer, sales director at RnD. “ALVEA Services Cloud Attached Storage provides a simple way to allow staff to share large files securely, both locally and remotely, and access them from wherever they may be working. It also provides secure cloud-based and local back-up so that remote staff can work productively even when they aren’t connected to the Internet.”
RnD implemented the two-phase project in January 2014 in a matter of weeks. First the company’s email was migrated to a cloud-based hosted Exchange 2013 platform. This was followed by the migration of files and seeding of data to ALVEA Services Cloud Attached Storage and the replacement of the Small Business Server with a new Domain Controller located in Brodie & Stone’s London head office. Two ALVEA Services C200 server devices were installed to provide local file access - one at the company’s head office and the other at its factory in Essex. Each Cloud Attached Storage server was backed up to the cloud to allow file access from any location, with project folders replicated between devices for quicker, local file access.
Danny Mitchell, finance director for Brodie & Stone said; “Because we’ve bought into a fully managed solution with 24/7 support, we now not only have guaranteed service levels but also predictable monthly costs. We anticipate that the total cost of ownership will be significantly lower than our previous system without having to make a major capital outlay, which would have been the alternative to moving to the cloud. As a small business with no internal IT department, both of these factors are key to us.”
ALVEA Services Cloud Attached Storage underwent a major upgrade in July 2013 to include file sync and share, mobile security, enhanced data seeding and cloud storage Service Level Agreement (SLA) capabilities. It is available to businesses through the ALVEA Services Reseller network and allows businesses to protect against the loss or corruption of critical business data by implementing a centralised, cloud-based storage and secure off-site data protection and recovery infrastructure.