Khan & Morris Accountants - Hosted Solutions

Client Overview

Taylor Made have been Khan & Morris Accountants' trusted IT partner since 1998. So when the building in Fareham where the company, and seven others, were based was subject to an arson attack, Taylor Made were on hand straight away to help get the company's IT up and running as soon as possible.

Challenges Faced

Due to the extent of the fire, most of the company's IT equipment had been completely destroyed, and access to the office building was restricted due to health and safety concerns about the structure. It was of paramount importance to minimise the impact to Khan & Morris Accountants' customers whilst work was undertaken to get the company back online. Communication was key to ensure that all stakeholders were kept informed of the changes taking place. Khan & Morris Accountants wanted to ensure that the company's new IT infrastructure would be as protected as possible from future disasters.

Potential Business Impact

The fire impacted on all aspects of the company's operation. The office needed to be relocated to a new premise suitable for their needs, and at short notice. Replacement IT equipment had to be sourced and fully installed with the company's business critical applications.

Solution

A disaster recovery project team was put in place at Taylor Made straight away, in order for the company to be operational as soon as possible. Temporary email access was restored, and a message was added to all out of office notifications and the website informing customers of the situation, on the morning of the fire. The disaster recovery project team at Taylor Made also assisted in the search for a suitable replacement office for the company to be based from. This was found within 48 hours. Khan & Morris Accountants' IT infrastructure was then moved into Taylor Made's multi-tenanted hosted environment, located at a custom-built, secure datacentre facility in Hampshire, as a long term solution. A hosted telephone solution was also installed, and all calls to the company's existing number were redirected to the new premises.

Results

Throughout the entire disaster recovery process, there was minimal disruption to business operation and stakeholders, aided by the rapid recovery of all services. The hosted environment ensures that the company now benefits from a secure, reliable and highly fault tolerant solution, that is the ideal environment for disaster recovery requirements. Taylor Made's hosted solution has removed the need for the company to house any servers or data storage on-site at the new premises, significantly improving their business continuity provision.

Future

Taylor Made's hosted solution is scalable, flexible and secure. In the long term this will enable Khan & Morris Accountants to respond to the changing needs of its stakeholders both efficiently and cost effectively and ensure that the IT infrastructure will allow for the growth of the company. The hosted environment's disaster recovery provision also offers the company greater reassurance that should the worst happen again, their infrastructure and data will not be affected. "Here at Khan & Morris Accountants, we pride ourselves on the high level of service offered and the IT systems that we have in place undoubtedly enable us to achieve this - without Taylor Made's informed and hands-on approach to ensuring we could function as a business shortly after the fire, this simple goal would not have been within our reach." Ray Khan, Partner.