CDC is a UK government-owned fund of funds investor with net assets of £2bn. Based in London, the organisation invests in private equity funds focused on the emerging markets of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

What was their problem?

CDC has used Connect to provide IT support since 2006. With 30 staff working across the world in different time zones, they needed a company that could provide 24/7 support, including cover at weekends. Because of the sensitive nature of much of their work, having a highly secure system has always been vital to CDC. As a result, the organisation had become increasingly concerned about the impact any disaster might have on their operation - not just the obvious fire or flood but a serious IT failure such as a server or network breakdown. A further complication was that, because CDC was based at a single location in London, they did not have the option, as many companies do, of using back up servers based at an alternative office.

How has Connect helped?

For a fixed monthly fee, Connect designed a recovery system for CDC so that the organisation could continue to function regardless of the type of disaster. Using Connect's Disaster Recovery Centre outside London, critical data saved onto any of CDC's servers is automatically and continuously backed up onto a duplicate network. The Centre uses the most up-to-date security and firewall protection, with ultra-fast connections. This ensures that anyone using the back up system, whether from abroad, at home on a laptop or PDA or even an internet café, can access their files at the same speed as before - and completely securely. If a disaster occurs, all CDC staff can receive new email within an hour and all of their old email, tasks and diary within four hours. Importantly, all of CDC’s files can also be accessed, from anywhere in the world, within four hours. A further feature of the fixed price package is that CDC is allowed to have a disaster twice a year without incurring any extra costs or excess. Before signing up to the new Disaster Recovery service, Connect set up a test system so that CDC could see their files running live on the alternative servers.