The Health Foundation

Designing and delivering a robust, cost-effective disaster avoidance solution

The Health Foundation is an independent charity working to improve the quality of healthcare in the UK and beyond. It operates independently from Government, political parties and other interest groups, seeking out the best people in healthcare and supporting them to learn and share with others.

The Health Foundation uses its annual endowment of approximately £20 million to sponsor projects, research and evaluation studies that test and measure new ways of improving health services in the future. It also seeks to influence decision makers in order to achieve sustainable and widespread improvements in the quality of patient care.

A charity like The Health Foundation has no customers and is not processing transactions day in and day out, so having a robust disaster recovery strategy may not seem like a top priority. However, as Jason Biggs, ICT Manager, explains, it can still be vitally important. "Increasingly we are becoming an information driven organisation," he says, "gathering and harnessing the data we collect to influence and improve healthcare. Consequently, although a disruption at our offices in Covent Garden might not be catastrophic to us operationally, we cannot afford to lose any data."

With this in mind Jason presented a business case for implementing a disaster avoidance solution to The Health Foundation's Director Team and, having gained approval, began looking for a backup location outside the M25, well away from London.

Proactive

Jason contacted a number of companies, but was put off by their cold, rather unfriendly attitude. He also approached ISC, who he had been working with for number of years. The approach was completely different.

"ISC were proactive, friendly and adaptable," he says. "We sat down and discussed what I was trying to achieve and the budget I had available. ISC researched a number of solutions and came back with a proposal that fully met our requirements."

The solution ISC put forward was based on Double-Take software. This makes data replication easy by providing real-time back up and automatic failover facilities for physical and virtual servers. The software, combined with three small servers at ISC's recovery centre in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, would give The Health Foundation the resiliency it required.

Adaptable

However, there was a problem. The full Double-Take solution was over Jason's budget. "I could see that the solution ISC put forward was just what we needed," he says. "But the cost of the first proposal was outside our budget. In particular the software costs were high. So ISC went away and brought back a second proposal, which was within budget. It meant we couldn't have the full automatic fail over option but, in fact, that has worked to our advantage. If we know a disruption is temporary we can choose not to fail over to the remote systems."

Responsive

Responsibility for implementing the solution was shared. The three remote servers were delivered to The Health Foundation's Covent Garden offices, where Jason configured and installed the operational software before they were shipped back to ISC.

ISC commissioned the Double-Take software, using both on-site and remote access resources. Finally Jason and one of ISC's specialists worked together to synchronise the on-site and remote servers.

"ISC's people were excellent," says Jason. "They were highly responsive, very professional and skilful. For obvious reasons we couldn't work on the production systems during the day, so they arranged for a lot of the work to be done outside hours. I am very happy with the way the whole process went."

Reliable

The Health Foundation now has a disaster avoidance strategy in place, something it just didn't have before, and has eliminated the risk of data loss. Over time the strategy will be expanded to compliment the existing business continuity plan. Jason is also looking at updating the Double-Take software and implementing remote management for the servers at ISC's recovery centre.

"I've been working with ISC on and off for ten years," says Jason. "I've tried working with other organisations but I keep coming back to ISC, because I know I can rely on them to use their knowledge and expertise to come up with a solution that is right for my organisation. They are so much better than anyone else I have tried."

"I've been working with ISC on and off for ten years. I've tried working with other organisations but I keep coming back to ISC, because I know I can rely on them to use their knowledge and expertise to come up with a solution that is right for my organisation. They are so much better than anyone else I have tried."
Jason Biggs, ICT Manager, The Health Foundation