Sports marketing agencyFast Trackhas invested in e-mail continuity technology to avoid potential
losses of £8,000 an hour.
Staff rely heavily on e-mail to manage marketing activities from
contract negotiations with sports event sponsors to selling TV
rights to broadcasters worldwide.
Events managed by Fast Track include the Aviva UK Grand Prix and
British Basketball at the O2 Arena.
The agency is also providing consultancy services to the 2009
British and Irish Lions Tour taking place in South Africa.
"We wanted our teams in South Africa to be independent and
unaware of any disruptions to IT operations in London," said Magnus
Leask, IS director at Fast Track.
Fast Track has selected software from
Neverfail to give staff round the clock access to its Microsoft
Exchange e-mail system internally or remotely using
Blackberry devices.
Neverfail guarantees that 170 staff in eight locations around
the world can access documents, e-mail and social media even if the
company's IT systems are disrupted.
All staff are automatically switched to a cloned secondary site
in Maidenhead if the system detects any failure of connectivity
with the primary site in central London.
Before Neverfail, Fast Track was using tape backups for its IT
systems, which meant hours of disruption to e-mail if there was a
power failure in London, said Leask.
"Unlike its competitors, Neverfail allows us to keep our e-mail
operation in-house, provides failover to Blackberry devices, and
helps us manage bandwith use," he said.
The easy switch between the two sites also enables Fast Track to
apply security updates to the primary site without any disruption
to business.