Who we work with

RMS
Background: In 2001 Akita were invited to the A13 site having already been in contract with another company within the Road Management Group.

RMS maintain the A13 road network on behalf of Transport for London and are based in Central London, close to Canary Wharf.

Over the course of the relationship with RMS, Akita has guided them through a series of changes reflecting the longevity of the partnership:

• Upgraded cabling structure from BNC to CAT5e
• Migrated from Netware 3.11 to NT4
• Migrated from NT4 to Windows 2000
• Migrated from Windows 2000 to Server 2003
• Consolidated all legacy hardware using VMware
• Migrated from Server 2003 to Server 2008
• Migration to hosted Exchange 2010 in the Akita cloud

It’s important to note that upgrades were not arbitrarily carried out.  Rather, a problem was identified and then a justifiable argument was presented to the management team.  Often any problems are identified from a combination of user feedback and Akita’s pro-active approach to network management.

Potential solutions are engineered from Akita’s constant scrutiny of new technologies and considerable experience gathered from deploying those technologies for other customers. Once the management team had been given all the options they made their informed decisions. This is a typical example of how Akita fits into the organisational structure of any given customer to deliver structured, targeted and quality support.

Recently the 42U rack of servers was virtualised and consolidated, leaving a 1U physical host to run 3 virtual servers. The power savings alone are estimated to be at least £600 per annum. To provide rapid backup and recovery, ensuring no more than 2 hours of downtime despite a catastrophic failure, a 2nd 1U server was added to the infrastructure to facilitate near real-time replication of virtual servers from one physical host to another.

The right blend of support package, the implementation of relevant technology and a keen understanding of RMS’s requirements continue to yield great results, matching the customer requirements for no downtime to match their 24/7/365 commitments.

CAYSH
Background: Following an in-depth tendering process, Akita were awarded a minimum 3 year contract to overhaul an under-performing IT system

CAYSH are a London-based charity working from multiple sites and with a head office in Croydon.  Akita look after around 90 users within the framework of a full IT outsourcing arrangement. This means that CAYSH benefit not only from our proactive and responsive IT support helpdesk, but we also act as their IT manager/director; always on hand to advise and recommend where improvements can be made.

Akita successfully migrated CAYSH from an under-performing cloud solution provider to our own virtual infrastructure. As a result, system performance and reliability were dramatically improved with all users noticing a significant uplift in speed, the eradication of system wide downtime and far greater reliability from their cloud computing services.

Legacy problems included system wide performance issues, decentralised resource control, insufficient email retention capabilities and poor reliability resulting in an overall lack of user confidence in the computer system.

Akita upgraded their email platform, from an inadequately performing Exchange 2003 server to Exchange 2010 as well as deploying a large Terminal Server upgrade. Users now have access to a farm of remote desktop servers comprised of multiple terminal servers which automatically load balance their connections and workloads.

CAYSH are no longer encumbered by their IT systems. Instead their cloud computing services deliver on the promise to serve as reliable tools which empower staff to achieve their goals.

Due to the structure of their organisation, staff frequently move between different locations and require consistent access to databases, files and emails. In response to these requirements, Akita implemented a terminal server farm, migrated to an Exchange 2010 environment and delivered a suitable support package.

These elements combine to facilitate:

• Secure access to server based resources from any location
• Consistent email delivery across multiple devices (PC’s, RDP, mobiles) without duplication
• A high degree of system reliability
• Restored user confidence in the system

All of this is underpinned by an infrastructure designed to be totally reliable to match CAYSH’s 24 hour operation.

As a charitable organisation, financial constraints have a strong bearing on the ongoing system development at CAYSH. Over the past few years, this has been a recurring theme with the majority of our clients and so Akita are ideally placed to balance the IT support and service needs of the organisation within the budgetary restrictions.

MCKENZIES
Background: Akita have been providing IT support services to McKenzies’ Surrey offices since 2010, when they were recommended to us by a mutual client. McKenzies were attracted to the proactive nature of our business as they had become increasingly frustrated with the reactive nature of their previous IT support company.

McKenzies is a well-established firm recognised as specialists in its chosen areas of law.  With a caring, professional and dedicated team, McKenzies are committed to providing the best possible legal service, whatever the requirements.

As a thriving and forward-looking company, they are particularly keen to enhance their systems where legitimate and cost-effective improvements can be identified.

Operating multiple servers which were approaching end-of-life, in 2011 the servers were virtualized to provide McKenzies with their own cloud computing infrastructure. This gave a number of key benefits, not least was the improved disaster recovery safeguards and the more reliable infrastructure.

In 2012, due to their complete satisfaction with the virtualization outcomes, Akita moved all users over to VDIs (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). VDIs gives them the benefit to work from any location (on or off-site) whilst always having access to their own personal desktop. In addition, this process also prolongs the life of their existing workstations reducing the long-term cost of desktop replacements.

Cloud computing is an increasingly-accepted form of corporate computing and there is far more acceptance of its role amongst previously skeptical IT managers. Not only the improvements in broadband speeds, but also the security enhancements, have made cloud computing a key components of future IT system planning.

Of course, there are different scales of cloud adoption – for many companies it may be limited to offsite backup to or a small number of hosted email mailboxes. Others are more willing to adopt a complete cloud computing system with hosted servers and even hosted VoIP telephone systems.

For McKenzies, the decision to create their own private cloud was preferred as opposed to utilising our datacentre. Compared to traditional server computing, it gave significant service enhancements and cost benefits as opposed to replacing multiple servers, whilst providing a superior disaster recovery solution.

CHERRY
Background: Cherry Advertising, an award-winning independent healthcare creative agency, based near London Bridge in SE1, chose Akita as their principle IT service provider in 2010. As a growing creative agency, Cherry utilise both PCs and Macs and they needed a London IT support partner who could not only look after both, but support them as the business developed. With our proven track-record of supporting both Microsoft and Apple software, and our established team, Akita were the obvious choice for Cherry.

Cherry, like the majority of our IT support clients throughout London, benefit from our pre-scheduled system maintenance days which are an invaluable way of enabling Akita to work closer with our clients. As well as drastically reducing the number of support issues, the pre-scheduled system maintenance days foster a closer working relationship with our clients and also allow for more proactive support and face-to-face user training opportunities.

As well as the valuable on-site time, Akita monitor Cherry’s systems around the clock to ensure that every is working as it should.  Our monitoring software provides an early-warning system and alerts our engineers to any potential problems before they cause further problems. This is the case even out of hours as our helpdesk team operate on a 24-hour basis.

Over and above this, Akita provide Cherry with a remote and telephone IT support service.  This means that any incidents requiring IT support are logged in our helpdesk system and speedily resolved with the minimum of inconvenience.  Although a guaranteed response time of 2 hours is offered as standard, in practice support incidents are dealt with in a matter of minutes.

Akita have been providing London IT support since 1996. Now serving hundreds of organisations ranging from 5-250 users, we have experience across almost all industries and our team boasts well over a 100 years of IT support expertise. To find out more about how we look after the London business community, contact us today!

SAFETELL
Background: Akita began providing IT support services to Safetell some years ago and, in 2010, migrated their previous physical server environment into a virtual environment.

Safetell is a leading designer, manufacturer, installer and maintenance provider of bespoke security products, based in Dartford.

Safetell’s platform runs from their own internal virtual cloud, with the cloud running on a Dell / VMware platform using the latest Microsoft server products.

To provide a disaster recovery solution, this cloud is replicated offsite meaning that should Safetell lose access to the main office the company servers are spun up from the remote disaster recovery site.

Safetell’s IT Manager, Andy Norris, was a key advocate of the VMware solution once he became away of the key benefits. With the previous Windows server infrastructure becoming due for upgrade, Akita discussed the various options in depth, highlighting the pros and cons of each and providing budgetary costings.

“Like most companies, we decided to virtualize our servers to reduce server sprawl and get better utilisation of hardware” said Andy Norris of Safetell.

“The ongoing costs of this – in terms of cost reduction, time-saving and energy efficiency gains – made the decision to move to a virtual infrastructure a straightforward one. We were made aware of the part VMware could play in our disaster recovery planning, but I have to say that the effectiveness of this has blown us away and helped define an incredibly robust business continuity strategy.”

For more details on how server virtualization can transform your business, contact Akita and discuss your requirements with our of our virtual server specialists.

LYCORED
Objectives: Increase performance, implement disaster recovery / business continuity, restore user confidence

Background: LycoRed UK sought a local IT support company who were both competent and approachable

LycoRed are a world renowned producer of added-value nutrients in the food industry.  They are headquartered in Israel with additional offices and facilities in the UK, USA and China.

LycoRed had a complicated network which they felt wasn’t being fully exploited in terms of functionality versus cost and there were serious question marks about the integrity of their backup and DR solutions.  Over and above those concerns, it was felt that the users had lost their faith in the quality and frequency of support they were receiving.

To counter the highlighted issues a detailed technical evaluation was undertaken to discover any weaknesses in the system as it was.  A series of recommendations were put forward for consideration by LycoRed’s management team and the following actions were taken:

• The existing terminal server environment was expanded to accommodate all the users
• The onsite VMware hosting infrastructure was reconfigured to lay the groundwork for business continuity
• The Internet connection was reconfigured via Akita’s datacentre-based firewalls to increase speed from 6Mbps to 100Mbps at no extra cost
• A suitable IT support plan was put in place which made provision for Akita engineers to make regular visits to the UK office in Kent so LycoRed users could get acquainted with them and thereby start to re-establish their faith in the concept of receiving help having asked for it
• A robust backup process was implemented and is subject to regular testing

Business continuity as a concept is something that many people confuse with disaster recovery. The continuity aspect is central to this concept as it’s just not good enough to have all of your data safely tucked away in a disaster recovery site if your users have no way of getting to it; your company still won’t be able to function.

To ensure that LycoRed never faced that scenario, their entire network is structured to leverage all the advantages of the datacentre services provided by Akita and so ensure that all staff members enjoy complete continuity for the manner in which they access their information. There are no more snow days!