June 2008
In this issue

√ Business Continuity
    Planning
√ Success Story
√ Sit Up Straight
√ Employee Spotlight
 

Business Continuity Planning
Not Just for Big Business

Paul Sullivan has seen it all. A 25-year veteran of disaster recovery and business continuity management, Sullivan witnessed the growth of continuity planning among the Fortune 1000 in the 1980s. He watched, first hand, the successes and failures of business continuity plans following the events of September 11, 2001 and in 2005 throughout the most active hurricane season in recorded history. Today, Sullivan is helping small and medium-sized companies plan for and recover after significant business interruptions.

"Continuity planning has always been associated with big business," said Sullivan, Vice President and General Manager, Agility Recovery Solutions. "We’re using the same knowledge, strategies and tactics we developed with the Fortune 1000 and implementing them among small and medium-sized businesses across North America."

Agility Recovery Solutions, a former division of General Electric, focuses planning and recovery efforts on small and medium-sized businesses, though the company continues to do work with giants such as IBM and HP.

Why Business Continuity? Why now?

Success Story: Virtualization
Helps Client Cut Costs, Improve Continuity

Background
PMA Capital Insurance Company (the ‘Company’ or ‘PMA’) is a domestic property and casualty reinsurance subsidiary in run-off. In conjunction with an overall effort to streamline the company’s IT infrastructure, PMA sought to dramatically reduce its server count without sacrificing speed, capacity or data integrity. In addition, PMA was looking to partner with a technology consultant that could take over the day-to-day support requirements that had previously been managed by an in-house IT department.

The Challenge
Prior to IT Solutions’ (ITS) involvement, PMA was managing over 35 servers, 7 switches, and a storage area network device (SAN). The age of the hardware and changes with the user base meant they were due for an upgrade and consolidation. But reducing these resources would have to be carefully planned and deployed so as not to disrupt the regular business workflow or risk loss of critical data in the migration process. ITS had to work closely with the application support staff to verify that their custom systems would function properly in a virtual environment.

Being a new vendor for PMA, ITS had to demonstrate appropriate expertise and reliability through references and the sales process - always a bigger challenge than working with an existing client. Also, PMA had been working with consultants to supply helpdesk and network support for a number of years. Not having any direct involvement in the project, these resources did not have the detailed knowledge and time to devote to the project that a typical in-house stakeholder would bring to such an effort.

The Solution