The Client MK One is a dynamic fashion retailer with 170 high street fashion stores around the UK offering high fashion at keen prices. The innovative, bright interiors and up-to-the minute fashion ranges attract crowds of shoppers, keen to keep up with the latest trends. The stores cater for all sizes and ages from young 7-8 year-olds in the Sophie department through to core ranges and sizes to the larger sizes in the Chapter department. A range of accessories including shoes, bags and jewellery is now widely available. Customers know that they can look good in all the latest styles from the cat walk at a fraction of the cost.

Background

TSGI Managed Services are a strategic partner and supplier to MK One, implementing and supporting systems across the range of their IT requirements. TSGI designed and implemented a Microsoft Active Directory network for MK One running Terminal Services and Exchange email over thin clients. A branch office connectivity solution allowed TSGI to provide MK One with a VPN connection to it’s Data Centre enabling the provision of it’s ActiveDR managed service.

The Challenge

Martin Draper, the IT Manager, for MK One had a disaster recovery plan which incorporated a typical disaster recovery contract. This is a hardware only solution where the contractor in event of a system failure arrives on site with a vehicle full of computers and attaches them to the customer’s network. It is the customer’s responsibility to restore from back up tapes their business critical systems on to the hardware. Therefore, the onus to restore the system relies on the integrity of the customer’s back up and the compatibility of the hardware being made available.

MK One’s contractual requirement with it’s insurers required Martin to test the Disaster Recovery plan, but he had never been able to restore his environment because of hardware incompatibility and in particular the procedure for restoring Active Directory is complex and highly subject to failure. “Our experience is that most people would struggle to restore Active Directory and if they did it would probably fail,” said Paul Robinson, Managing Director of TSGI, “This is why we created the ActiveDR service.”

The Solution

TSGI recommended ActiveDR as a solution for MK One’s Active Directory Disaster Recovery. The service includes:

• Unlimited restoration of deleted objects ie. accidental deletion of an organisational unit (OU)
• Business continuity in the event of total failure of the customer’s environment
• Restoration of the customer’s Active Directory back to their site when the customer is ready

“We looked for a solution that would maintain the integrity of our Active Directory off site that was not just a back up,” said Martin, “In TSGI’s ActiveDR we found a service that not only reached this objective but added further benefits like business continuity and object restoration. We found this to be unique in the market place.”

“ActiveDR offers us savings in both management and hardware costs, but above all it has given the MK One business the piece of mind that our critical Active Directory environment will remain intact and off site in the event of a disaster,” Martin concluded.

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