Accord PLC (Storage)

Case Study Storage 12/12/2007

Background

Accord PLC is one of the UK's leading providers of management and support services to both public and private sector clients.

Accord manage numerous outsourced and joint venture government projects, with clients including the Highways Agency (HA), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Ministry of Defence (MOD).

Accord have structured the group into a number of client focused operating companies, designed to deliver costeffective support and services throughout the UK.

Requirement

To support the business areas, Accord wanted a core centralised IT infrastructure to drive cost efficiencies and encourage information sharing and best practice. To achieve this goal, it needed to improve communications, create a common operating structure and provide access to data from any area or location within the group.

A large quantity of data was identified as needing to be stored, yet still be readily accessible. Accord decided to take a storage area network (SAN) approach, which could be managed from a centralised location, the solution had to be easy to access and simple to maintain, in addition it had to be able to automatically back-up data reliably and scale cost-effectively to meet future storage growth demands.

Solution

Accord approached several IT providers that specialised in Storage Solutions, one of those suppliers was ISC who had previously worked with Accord on Server Based Computing projects.

When designing the storage infrastructure, ISC undertook extensive research and auditing of the company's business processes to ensure all needs were fully met.

ISC built a multi-vendor SAN solution, which exceeded Accord's current and future storage and back up requirements, the solution was designed and implemented on-time and within budget.

Summary of Product Solution

Eurologic 2502 SANbloc
Adic Scalar 100 LTO Tape Library
Brocade 3x00 FC Switch
Bakbone Netvault
Installation/Consultancy/Training/Support

"The other companies we approached could not guarantee that their systems would fully support the Accord environment. ISC are extremely responsive and demonstrated a high level of commitment to resolving any issues that arose, for example, when one problem occurred, an engineer arrived on site at 4.30pm Friday and did not leave until everything had been resolved at 2am."

"Everyone we have met from ISC have been very professional and offered excellent technical knowledge" said Dave Price, Director of IT Operations at Accord.

Benefits

A comprehensive storage area network to facilitate information sharing and improved communication.
Seamless integration with minimal business interruption
Improved functionality and accessibility to information for all users
Enabled rapid, 'just in time' growth of data storage for email and other business critical data
Ability to support future expansion
High levels of performance and reliability
Ease of support and manageability

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Storage The four service categories of ISC's Storage division - Storage Consolidation, Data Protection, High Availability and Data Management - are the key elements of our 4-Tier Strategy for Enterprise Storage.

Storage Consolidation You can significantly lower your storage costs with ISC Storage Consolidation.

Data Protection Data Protection enables automated backup across a range of tape and disk media.

High Availability High Availability lets you manage a potential disaster whilst retaining continual access to your applications.

Data Management ISC's Data Management service archives your data across various media according to its importance and frequency of use.