Member Article

ITS helps keep the lights on at Lyco

The UK’s premier lighting company, Lyco, has implemented a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution from nationwide Managed IT Services provider, IT Specialists (ITS), to help simplify disaster recovery outsourcing, vaulting and archiving of data and improve security of its customer-facing and internal systems.

Established in 1995, Lyco’s rapid expansion, increasing stock and product lines, and a growing customer base in both commercial and domestic lighting have all contributed to an exponential growth in business data over the past 20 years.

Recognising the need for more time efficient data recovery and secure backups, to enable 24/7 business continuity, Lyco approached ITS, its MSP since 2009, for a new data recovery and security solution that allowed storage of its increasing amount of data, both onsite and offsite, and reduced data recovery times.

“Minimising the potential risk of data loss, as well as operational downtime, was a key consideration when Lyco approached us, as was the need to provide a constant online service to Lyco’s customers.” said Matt Kingswood, Head of ITS. “By securely locating data across multiple sites using our BlackCloud and BlackVault solutions, we not only enabled the lighting retailer’s business to continue running regardless of external circumstances, we have also reduced data recovery time from less than eight hours to less than one.”

ITS’ BlackVault and BlackCkloud managed data recovery products offered Lyco on and off-site storage and support to ensure business as usual no matter what disasters may strike. The BlackCloud solution provided Lyco a fully managed private cloud that enabled it to replicate data to a secure alternate offsite location and offered security through encryption during transit and while in storage. BlackVault provided a comprehensive onsite disaster recovery platform, giving Lyco quick and easy access to servers as necessary, from any location with a secure Internet connection.

Mark Staffiere, IT Director, Lyco, concluded: “Now that we have onsite and remote back up, we are confident that our data can be recovered quickly, while our IT team can focus on core business and strategic projects. ITS really is helping us to keep the lights on 24/7 - they managed the whole process, they understand our business requirements and ensured these were met.”

ITS’ offsite data storage provides the ability to vault data so there is no need to use an external hard drive or USBs or to remove these from site as an additional backup method. It also offers clients including Lyco a fully managed service that automatically restores data and monitoring so they are supported 24 hours a day, seven days a week in all circumstances.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by ITS .