Customer
The MO Holdings group of companies covers a diverse range of industries, including Property Development, Freight Forwarding, Recruitment and Internet Portals. This diversity whilst interesting, leads to daily challenges and testing situations.
Challenge
The main Domain Controller and E-mail server at MO Holdings central London Head Office had been outgrown, both in terms of aging server hardware and the limitations of Windows Small Business Server as an operating system.
Due to the 24/7 nature of both the Internet Portals and International Freight Forwarding, downtime during this project had to be negligible.
Historically MO Holdings had added hardware as growth had dictated without investigating other options and possible configurations. It was important that Probrand provided a stable and scalable solution..
Solution
Probrand supplied a physical server running a Windows Server operating system. Exchange was installed to meet licensing requirements and ensure compatibility with existing applications. The server was specified to meet current needs while allowing for future scalability and upgrades.
An Engineer was briefed to provide Probrand “compassionate” install standards, to minimise any possible downtime or disruption. Initially the new server was run in tandem with the existing
system, and once the engineer was satisfied with the configuration, the data, applications and finally the mailboxes and email settings were transferred. Due to the critical nature of email within the MO Holdings business model it was decided to continue running the legacy server for a period of 1 week to
ensure 100% that the changeover was complete. At this time the legacy server was retired from service within the Head Office, restored to its factory default settings and re-utilised at one of the remote sites.
We would look to Probrand for advice and where necessary installation for any future IT upgrades and changes.
Benefits
“Making any major changes to our IT infrastructure always raises concerns relating to downtime and ongoing issues, as an organisation Probrand havemsupported our existing network for the past 18
months but this was the first installation that they had undertaken. The knowledge of the assigned engineers was very impressive and the levels of expertise and professionalism during the install led to
a minimum of disruption. We would look to Probrand for advice and where necessary installation for any future IT upgrades and changes.”
Probrand also installed Server Monitoring:
“This managed service has reduced the number of times our IT system impacts on the business increasing our uptime to over 99%. When we do have down time it is no longer hours, it’s minutes. As a
proactive service, Probrand’s proactive IT support flags issues before they become problems allowing Probrand to find a proactive resolution without useven knowing. It’s like having our own in-house IT department 24/7. Our IT system is more efficient, has fewer problems and allows us to focus on doing business rather than weathering an IT headache. Probrand’s proactive IT support is an asset to the business.”
Max Wilkinson, IT Manager, MO Holdings
Our IT system is more efficient, has fewer problems and allows us to focus on doing business rather than weathering an IT headache. Probrand’s proactive IT support is an asset to the business.