Client Challenges
Rock IT stepped up their provision of cloud-based services around seven years ago. As the market transformed and turned towards both cloud computing and hosted applications, businesses quickly began to adopt this way of storing and managing their data. Rock IT wanted to make sure that they could quickly scale their cloud provision to meet customer demand. Initially offering a cloud backup solution to service clients, Rock IT found that the technology lacked some of the technical features that were required by customers. The service from their original data centre provider also remained a crucial aspect of decision-making, with the original partner lacking the ability to help them scale or offer the quick provisioning that was increasingly needed as the business grew.
To tackle these problems, Rock IT engineered their own bespoke cloud services environment and chose to deploy hardware in a new colocation data centre, in close proximity to their headquarters. The new facility would need to provide the scalability, flexibility, connectivity and technical service that was needed to support the firm’s growing cloud portfolio.
The ServerChoice Solution
Initially, Rock IT sought a single primary data centre location that would provide close access to their North London base. This would allow their technical personnel quick access to manage and maintain the servers, storage and networking equipment used to deliver the cloud services they required now and in the future. They would then look for a second data centre facility to act as a backup and DR site and deliver business continuity for their cloud operations. After an initial recommendation from a colleague, Rock IT Technical Director and joint owner Andrew Grey was impressed by the design and execution at ServerChoice’s Stevenage Data Centre. The expertise and service-driven ethos of their technical staff were second to none, and today Rock IT is one of ServerChoice’s longest-standing customers – a relationship that began in 2013. In those seven years ServerChoice has helped them scale quickly and meet rapid demand for their cloud servicing provision.
“In 2013, we’d identified the potential to grow our cloud and backup businesses, but our existing partner could not offer us the scalability, flexibility and responsiveness we needed,” said Andrew Grey. “ServerChoice continued to meet the market expectation in terms of quality, and where our previous facility couldn’t accommodate our plans for growth or meet client demand, ServerChoice went over and above. ServerChoice recommended a scalable and flexible new colocation solution that would meet our needs now and offer us the service and space to scale in future.”
He continued: “The product continued to meet the market expectation in terms of quality, but the service and features couldn’t accommodate our plans for growth or meet such rapid client demand. ServerChoice recommended a diverse, scalable and flexible colocation solution that could meet our needs now and help us plan for the future.” After selecting the primary data centre site in Stevenage, Rock IT chose a secondary ServerChoice site in Harlow, Essex for its DR and customer backup facility. This provides the perfect secondary location and even greater business continuity for Rock IT customers.
Implementation
ServerChoice’s Stevenage facility was selected as the primary site for Rock IT’s hardware and services and the company acted as a trusted advisor, empowering Rock IT fast growth by meeting demanding timescales as and when rapid change was required. Here the data centre plays a crucial role in service delivery, meaning dependency on the critical infrastructure and the expertise from technical teams had to be second to none. ServerChoice worked tirelessly to ensure the needs were met”.
“With our data centre facilities, we are looking for reliability, performance, connectivity, agility and flexibility,” continued Andrew. “ServerChoice offered us that and more. They were ready to accommodate our every need from the start, and their service-driven and flexible ethos, in addition to a high-quality facility, continues to be crucial in meeting our growing client demands.”
Both data centres provide Rock IT with the same rack space and power capacity the team needs to support their cloud, hosting and DR requirements, and as the business has experienced new growth, the facilities have been quickly expanded to meet client demand.
“ServerChoice offered high-quality data centre facilities, an excellent commercial package, and both the best connectivity and end-to-end solution we’ve experienced,” Grey continued. “Their team and technical capabilities continue to exceed our expectations at every stage, often working to short timescales and outside of normal hours to meet our needs.”
“The decision to partner with ServerChoice has proved successful and today we offer much more to customers than first predicted,” said Grey. “In an ever-changing market, their data centres have never been an obstacle to any changes we wanted to make for our business – they have opened avenues for us.”
“More importantly, they invested in building a long-term relationship, prioritising service over contracts, ensuring that our customer needs come first. ServerChoice have a positive business ethos to accompany a reliable and resilient colocation environment built around flexibility. They have provided the right foundations and platform for growth –enabling us to grow our business more than 20 times over, since the inception of our partnership.”
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Industry
IT and cloud services
Locations
UK
Summary
Rock IT is a managed service provider (MSP)headquartered in Barnet, North London. They supply mission-critical IT, connectivity, and cloud services, including data backup and disaster recovery (DR), remote desktops, managed servers, IT support and data security. The company has been operating since 1998 and their focus is on SME customers with staff numbers typically varying between five and 200.
Accessibility
Cloud service providers like Rock IT need flexible, reliable, and scalable infrastructure to meet the evolving business needs of their growing customer base.
Tailored cost package
By going to ServerChoice they are benefiting from data centres in ideal locations to provide the performance, connectivity and agility required for their critical data workloads.
Responsive service
Not only that, the ServerChoice facilities have provided the right foundations for substantial business growth.