Prinova Solutions

IT SERVICES FOR MAIDSTONE COMPANY

In 2017, Prinova acquired LycoRed, a world-renowned producer of added-value nutrients in the food industry.

As a leading provider of IT services for Maidstone businesses, the company approached Akita for IT support solutions.

Initially, LycoRed had a complicated network which they felt wasn’t being fully exploited in terms of functionality versus cost. There were some serious question marks about the integrity of their backup and disaster recovery solutions. Over and above those concerns, it was felt that the users had lost their faith in the quality and frequency of support they were receiving.

To counter the highlighted issues, a detailed technical evaluation was undertaken to discover any weaknesses in the system as it was. A series of recommendations were put forward for consideration by the management team and the following actions were taken:

• The existing terminal server environment was expanded to accommodate all the users
• The onsite VMware hosting infrastructure was reconfigured to lay the groundwork for business continuity
• The Internet connection was reconfigured via Akita’s data centre-based firewalls to increase speed from 6Mbps to 100Mbps at no extra cost
• A suitable IT support plan was put in place which made provision for Akita engineers to make regular visits to the main UK office in Maidstone, Kent, so users could get acquainted with them and thereby start to re-establish their faith in the concept of receiving help having asked for it
• A robust backup process was implemented and is subject to regular testing

Business continuity as a concept is something that many people confuse with disaster recovery. The continuity aspect is central to this concept as it’s just not good enough to have all of your data safely tucked away in a disaster recovery site if your users have no way of getting to it; your company still won’t be able to function.

To ensure that the organisation never faced that scenario, their entire network is structured to leverage all the advantages of the datacentre services provided by Akita. This ensures that all staff members enjoy complete continuity for the manner in which they access their information.