The Isles of Scilly Steamship Group is unique in the UK in terms of its breadth of transport operations including commercial airline, airport and shipping services, providing lifeline links for both passengers and freight between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland. In addition, the Company operates Penzance Dry Dock and several other businesses on the islands.
Isles of Scilly Steamship Group were looking to upgrade their current IT Systems, to help support the growth of their business. A main concern was business continuity, in the event of an IT failure, and ensuring operations could resume as quickly as possible.
Following an initial meeting, we undertook an audit to assess the current systems, and put together a list of recommendations. Our recommendations were split into two phases. Phase one was to add a high availability system and implement a fault tolerance for critical systems. This incorporated virtualising all server systems onto a new hardware and software platform. To aid the network connectivity, we added multiple internet connections, using leased lines at multiple sites with an automated switchover. Stuart Reid, Chief Financial Officer, said:
"In addition to the security upgrade, we are able to streamline the way we work internally, replicating the same systems Piran use, which has also helped us increase efficiency and reduce on-going costs."
Phase two of the project was focused around disaster recovery. We recommended a system that was resilient enough to withstand a range of scenarios including data loss, hardware failure, software failure, internet failure and recovery from a complete systems failure.
We updated ageing Microsoft systems to versions that are supported for the next 10 years. This included a migration to Office 365, allowing the team to have added flexibility to access emails outside of the office, as well as creating a secure back-up on the cloud. This can now be called upon in the event of a critical site failure and has ensured business continuity in the event of systems failure.
We are delighted to continue supporting Isles of Scilly Steamship Company by supporting their internal IT Manager with higher level support.
