The Value of Fallback - Invocation Case Study
INVOCATION CASE STUDY
1st– 3rdApril 2019
One of the world’s top 50 Asset Managers, and Customer of FortressAS, quickly saw the value of their fallback service at FortressAS Crossharbour Recovery Centre in April.
The communications to their home site had become unstable and trading operations were in jeopardy. So, the Customer invoked their Business Continuity service with FortressAS.
This provided them with 35 work area recovery positions, most allocated to traders, in the brand new FortressAS Recovery Centre at Crossharbour. These positions were connected to the Customer systems via dedicated communications links, which were stable.
The service had only been put in place at the start of the year and as a result no tests had been carried out. So, the fast turn around and technical expertise provided by the FortressAS recovery technicians made all the difference and enabled the Customer team to smoothly deal with the issue.
Below is the invocation timeline:
| Date | Time | Activity |
| 1/4/19 | 19:57 | The Customer emailed in a request to put the FortressAS facility on Standby. This was responded to within 1 minute, confirming receipt and accepting the Standby. |
| 20:15 | The FortressAS Technical Account Manager (TAM) spoke with the customer and it was agreed that FortressAS would deploy their PC image to the Recovery Suites. | |
| 21:20 | The Customer image was deployed to 50 PCs (the Customer was contracted for only 35 were but extra were made available should they be needed).Recovery Suites 2 and 3 were patched through to the Customer networkAll work was completed remotely to this point using the latest technology deployed by FortressAS for this purpose. | |
| 2/4/19 | 02:00 | The Customer confirmed the need to fully invoke the service.The TAM arrived onsite to check the PC builds and confirm that all were ready. |
| 04:00 | The Customer arrived at the Recovery Centre and confirmed that the network connectivity was good.As no previous test had taken place, some manual steps were taken to finalise their build. The TAM was able to offer valuable technical assistance to speed up this process. | |
| 07:45 | The Customer traders arrived on site and began trading live from the Recovery Centre. | |
| 10:00 | Over 30 Customer staff onsite, working happily and as normal from the Recovery Centre. | |
| 19:00 | Customer staff worked through to 7pm. | |
| 3/4/19 | 06:00 | Fortress AS back onsite to provide support. |
| 06:32 | Client email: ‘Early indications are that our network issue has been resolved. I will confirm later this morning once more thorough testing has been completed. We have advised users to attend our main office today.’ | |
| 08:43 | Invocation – completed |
Chris Copage, Technical Account Manager for this invocation, comments here on how it all went from the FortressAS point of view.
“Considering the Customer had only just completed their workstation build and installed their new circuit the outcome was very positive.
It was a pleasure supporting the Customer and welcoming them onsite. The Fortress AS team worked seamlessly with the Customer’s IT team and gives thanks for their support!”
In the Customer’s words,“The invocation process was flawless and comments from our users have been very positive.…given the situation we were placed in, it was an impressive result – well done!’
The Customer Chief Administrative Officer, also commented, “The invocation was flawless, and we received very positive feedback on the improved environment from all end users.’
“It is great that we were able to support the Customer during this potential disaster to their business. This is what we work hard, alongside the Customer, to prepare for and having this provision in place clearly enabled them to continue trading despite their home site technical issues.” Says Andrew Lawton, FortressAS CEO.
“The trading volume that day was estimated to be well in excess of twenty times the annual subscription for the service.
The key result being that our Customer was able to meet their customers’ needs and deliver against their regulatory responsibilities despite the difficult situation.”
Well done team FortressAS!
#invocation #businessasusual #disasterrecovery #businesscontinuity #nodowntime