Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery

IT-Switch provides specialists who offer independent consulting services in all aspects of Business Continuity Management (BCM), including IT Disaster Recovery, Workplace Recovery, On-Line Backup and Consultancy. We apply our commercial and technical qualified experience via proven methodologies, whilst at the same time offering skills and know-how, derived from real-life emergency situations.

IT Disaster Recovery

IT-Switch provides mobile ship to site disaster recovery services, ideal for organisations that would prefer to recover to one of their own buildings rather than a third-party location.

We offer a vast range of services relating to Systems and Data Resilience that has proved of interest to companies of all sizes and in all sectors, including:

Off-Site Data Vaulting
Server Consolidation/Virtualisation
Ship to Site of Replacement Hardware
Laptop Continuity
Work Area Recovery
Business Continuity Guidance
Data Verification Audit

We strongly believe that although there are separate components that ensure resilience they should all provide an ‘end to end’ solution. What use is data without hardware? What use is hardware without verified data? IT-Switch will talk to you about all of these solutions and how they work together, regardless of platform. As an IT-Switch client you will see;

Fast Contracted Delivery Times
‘At elbow’ Recovery Support
Unique Risk Management and Syndication Software
Invocation for any reason whatsoever
Annual Rehearsals at your chosen location
Flexible Contracts
Outstanding Client Management

Workplace Recovery

IT Switch can provide alternate sites should a business need to re-locate it’s critical staff in the event of some form of disaster incident at it’s offices. These sites are strategically placed around the country to ensure that the majority of businesses are within a maximum of only a hours drive away.

Each site has modern and spacious offices and is equipped with up to date technology and communication links, including the facilities you would expect from a modern office facility.

On-Line Backup Services

Having a complete working backup of vital company information forms a major part of business continuity. For a backup strategy to be fully effective, it needs to be secure, easy to use and manage, cost-effective and offer a simple, efficient and timely method of restoring lost of corrupted data. IT-Switch offers exactly that – with the added benefit that backups are sent off site to one of our dedicated data centres.

IT-Switch operates an agentless method of backup – this means that you can backup as many PC’s, servers and applications as you wish, just by installing the IT-Switch client onto one master machine – there is no need to add client software on to any other device held permanently on the network. The whole backup schedule is set up and managed at one central point, meaning that administration and management of backups is reduced to a minimum.

Having created backup schedules, and designed which files, folders, applications and servers are to be backed up, the system is ready to go. The backups are initially created on a designated server which is held locally on the network. The server holds an initial full backup of the system, following which only changes are backed up. This reduces the volume of storage that is required, and the bandwidth needed to send backup packets off site.

For additional security, the server itself is backed up to servers held at one of IT-Switch’s secure data centres. The server sends packets containing incremental backups over the internet to IT-Switch. These backup packets are compressed and then encrypted by the server using 256-bit AES encryption. A standard broadband connection can be used. For data volumes that exceed 3-5GB per day, we would recommend a larger capacity dedicated line to be used.

Restoration of files, PC’s applications and even full servers could not be easier. Restoration of data can be done locally, operating at LAN speed and is easy to do, especially when compared to the hassle of restoring from other backup methods, such as tape. In the unfortunate circumstance of the server failing, being stolen, or even being affected by a disaster such as a flood or fire, IT-Switch will provide an engineer to transfer the data held on our backup servers to a replacement server. This will then be transported to site and installed, within hours of the data transfer being completed.

Consultancy

Many companies have recognised the need to protect their business processes from disasters, but everyone has to start somewhere. What are the issues? What needs protecting? Where are the risks? Where should the focus be?

In just a short space of time our high level business impact and risk assessment can answer these questions for your company and make recommendations on directing valuable resources to those areas which are critical to your business.

The review of your IT systems, together with your voice and data communications will provide an expert insight into the process of how an organisation organises and manages it systems and networks. We audit your IT structure, from policy level to implementation with specific regard to the requirements of the European standard ISO/IEC 17799 (BS7799), the Data Protection Act 1998, e-mail and Internet usage policies, procurement and maintenance protocols etc. We examine in detail your IT security measures to ensure that best practices are being followed, and we make recommendations for introducing the necessary measures if we believe it is necessary. We use best practices coupled with state of the art tools to help us achieve pragmatic and cost effective results.