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BritishAmerican Business Hosting & Connectivity
Background
BritishAmerican Business (BAB) is a transatlantic business organisation dedicated to helping companies connect and build their businesses on both sides of the Atlantic. It provides its members - currently more than 700 of the world’s leading multinationals and middle-market companies - with access to business connections, markets, influence and intelligence — in short, opportunities for business expansion. BAB delivers networking and targeted marketing platforms, business intelligence and regulatory advice and influence.
This not-for-profit organisation, run by 12 London-based staff and 10 in New York, puts on a large programme of events - as many as 100 in a year - as well as offering marketing opportunities and business services. Staff including Patrick Cox, New York-based Senior IT Manager, and Paul Brown, London-based Director of Events and Marketing, have multiple roles. Both have been involved with a major systems unification project which at time of writing is just coming to completion, and which Patrick Cox sees as “an evolutionary step for the company”.
Attention to requirements
BAB as it is today resulted from the merger in 2000 of the American Chamber of Commerce (UK) and the British-American Chamber of Commerce. As background to the hosting project, Patrick Cox explains that needs had evolved post-merger and the company had progressed from credit card processing to an event management system and then to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. However, “A lot of our processes from an IS perspective were based on multiple applications, not linked together electronically, with very little data sharing between offices. Each office had its own local file servers, and all the company email was run on a USA-based server, which caused issues for large mail-outs from the London office.”
While examining the possibility of moving to a better CRM database system, BritishAmerican Business saw the opportunity to make a more fundamental change with far greater impact: to bring the two offices together with a unified IT service, with the mission-critical systems hosted from a single source. This raised many important issues, including data security and resilience.
Paul Brown says: “For us to be able to work from one database, we needed a hosting solution that was guaranteed to be backed up, and had a failsafe.” Data is key to the company’s business: “We couldn’t afford to lose data if a building burned down in London or New York”. Capacity was another consideration: “We have a large communications programme going out of both offices, so we needed a solution that could cope with the demand — and provide security behind that. We needed 24/7 support, because of the international time differences. We also wanted to be able to facilitate remote working.”
Of the hosting suppliers considered, Iconnyx impressed BritishAmerican Business from the start: “It was the attention they took to our requirement,” recalls Paul Brown. “The response time we received on our enquiries and questions was very quick. They had a good understanding of what we were trying to achieve.”
Iconnyx also gained approval for not pushing for the ‘high end’: “It was more a case of making sure we got the fundamental basis of what we needed as an operation for what we looking to achieve long term, and focussing our investment on those key areas.
“We felt they were honest in their approach, and their value as well.” This was important, because the overall investment in the project would be large for the organisation, needing Board approval. “We had a clear understanding from Iconnyx of what was required of us financially,” Paul Brown says.
Instrumental in connectivity
Patrick Cox values the technical input provided by Iconnyx during the earliest stages: “They helped us design the network, based on the input we had and the requirements we had identified, and they identified shortfalls in what we were thinking about, and then helped us further modify the system that we were devising. They were really instrumental in the design and specification of the new system.”
Patrick Cox was the technical lead for the project, with Paul Brown project managing the hosting aspects — both give Iconnyx another tick in the box for their noting of different individuals’ levels of technical understanding, and for explaining things accordingly.
Consolidation and upgrade
The consolidation project can be viewed as layers. Uppermost — most visible to the BritishAmerican Business users — is the website and database, provided by IRIS. Underpinning this and other software are four new managed servers utilising Iconnyx’s unique SANServe managed hosting platform. As well as providing this hosted environment in the United Kingdom, Iconnyx is maintaining the servers and the operating systems.
In order to run the service over the internet effectively with increased connectivity and download speeds, and the ability for either BAB office to do mailings to several thousand people at any time convenient to itself, the project required increased bandwidth at each location. The New York office has upgraded its internet service with its local provider, and Iconnyx is providing BAB’s London office with a new 100MB fibre circuit, running 10MB internet bandwidth, with an auto-failover ADSL backup. “They helped us to achieve a better internet service at a competitive price,” notes Paul Brown. “As an extra layer, all Microsoft and other applications were installed and are supported for us.”
Timesaver for the organisation
“Everything is very reliant on other aspects of the project,” says Patrick Cox. “But if allocating specific benefits to individual components of the solution is tricky, nominating the most important overall advantage is easy. It’s really going to be a timesaver for this organisation — which is exactly what we wanted. We operate at a level where we really have limited staff resources, but high expectations.”
As the project has gone along, BAB has seen continuing responsiveness from Iconnyx. “For support, it doesn’t matter what size you are or what you are investing,” comments Paul Brown. “I get the impression they treat all clients the same.” He believes his company gets very personal service in this respect: “Even after you have taken the systems and are using their solutions, they are looking at aftercare and at your business and where it is looking to go”.
Patrick Cox sees the business going faster as a result of this project. “Sharing the same documents, the same email server, we’ll be able to do cross promotion and individual promotion. All the development will take place in a shared environment, we’ll have collaborative tools, all on the remotely hosted solution from Iconnyx.
“It’s really going to save a lot of time for our staff, and greatly enhance our ability as an organisation to share information as well as mine that data, manipulate it, and generate the kind of reports that will help us move forward. In essence, it is an evolutionary step!”
Testiomonials and Results
“Flexibility and willingness to grasp and work within our business model as well as our budget are all important. We are very cognisant of not over-spending, and Iconnyx are good at understanding our position.”
Patrick Cox ,Senior IT Manager, BritishAmerican Business
“We were looking for a company that we wanted to have a long term relationship with, and be comfortable within the knowledge that we were getting a competitive service, we have found that in Iconnyx.”
Paul Brown,Director of Events and Marketing, BritishAmerican Business
“For a small organisation, time is crucial. Many of us have multiple roles, and I can’t spend time chasing people. I think communications and good response are key. When you are dealing with Iconnyx, you are able to leave it to the professionals!”
Patrick Cox, Senior IT Manager, BritishAmerican Business
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