ICSTIS, the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services, is the industry-funded regulator for all premium rate charged telephone services with 70 employees based in central London.

What was their problem?

Since 2006, Connect has provided ICSTIS with IT Helpdesk Support as well as installing new servers and upgrading the organisation’s firewall and security system. Connect’s monthly report flagged up an increasing number of calls relating to problems with two of the organisation’s servers with frequent periods of downtime. As these servers held ICSTIS’ financial and customer information databases, it was apparent that a rapid solution was required. Like many organisations, having frequent problems with key databases is a significant issue. Any changes to the IT system would therefore need to ensure that the servers would be constantly available.

How did Connect help?

After assessing the different options that could resolve the problem and the costs of the various alternatives, Connect recommended a solution that would guarantee that the critical databases were always available. To achieve this objective, Connect’s team of engineers installed two servers as a High Availability Cluster, that both access the information – and automatically take over if the other were to fail. A team of engineers having analysed ICSTIS' requirements for the project with the in-house IT team, Connect's engineers installed the new servers and software, with downtime kept to outside working hours. The existing servers and network were upgraded at the same time to ensure that they were less likely to fail.