Property giant shores up disaster defences

PROPERTY company Bruntwood has signed five-year deal which it hopes will better portect it from natural disasters like floods, power failures, virus attacks or acts of cyber-terrorism.

The contract is with ANS Group, the managed cloud service provider, which will update ageing systems, including Bruntwood’s disaster recovery(DR) solution.

Disaster recovery involves a set of policies and procedures to enable the continuation of vital technology and infrastructure and systems following a natural or mad-made disaster, to protect Bruntwood’s assets.

Working with ANS Group, Bruntwood has implemented two NetApp systems across two sites – one at Bruntwood’s Manchester headquarters and  another at M247, the biometrically-secured data centre in Trafford Park – helping it to refresh ageing storage systems and increasing resilience across the business.

Bruntwood also subscribed to the ANS FlexPod service, which will ensure critical applications are available in the event of a disaster.

Paul Bamber, head of IT for Bruntwood said, “This investment means that IT has become an enabler and we now have an infrastructure that can respond to the demands of our business.”

 “We have built a solid platform that allows technology to help shape the strategy of the business from infrastructure and application, to resilience and back-up.”

Andy Barrow, chief technical officer at ANS added: “In a market as competitive as property, speed and agility wins in the marketplace. This investment will enable Bruntwood to respond to a fast moving market quicker than ever before.

“Disaster recovery is critical for an organisation the size of Bruntwood and streamlining the manual processes has allowed the organisation to be more strategic on a day-to-day basis with added infrastructure resilience.”