Case Studies

PHARMACEUTICAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPER AVOIDS IT HEADACHE WITH MDS

A UK-based software developer has revealed how a ten-year relationship with data centre specialist MDS Technologies has seen the company tackle ever more challenging IT requirements.

DELIVERING A SOLID BACKBONE FOR IKON OFFICE SOLUTIONS

MDS hosts the In-Touch application at its secure Corsham I data centre facility, ensuring that IKON can always rely on In Touch to allow it to communicate with, and despatch jobs to, a 400-strong team of mobile engineers across the UK.

“In Touch is more than just a messaging system” says IKON’s Senior Software Developer Steve Shearman.

“We depend on it to provide us with an up-to-the-minute flow of information between our mobile team and head office. It enables us to send our engineers to, and complete, jobs quicker which makes us more efficient and gives us more time enabling us to get more done.

“It also integrates with IKON’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This gives IKON’s technicians instant access to vital central resources at the touch of a button, and most importantly, when they’re out with customers.”

The performance of the wireless application however, relies on a solid and reliable connection and this is where IKON recognises the crucial role MDS’s strong links with mobile service provider Vodafone play in its day-to-day operation.

“MDS provides the gateway for the flow of all the information sent using In Touch so their servers need to be able to talk to both our mobile devices and our backend servers to pull it all together,” explains Steve. “This however depends on the connectivity of the mobile cellular network.

“MDS’s excellent relationship with Vodafone ensures that downtime is kept to an absolute minimum and its responsiveness means that the company’s engineers can usually sort any issues before we even know about them – we very seldom have to call them.”

Steve concludes by stressing the quality and reliability of the service provided by MDS: “We are extremely happy with our relationship with MDS and the fact that we don’t need to have much contact with them says it all.”

TRAPEZE SWING INTO ACTION WITH MDS

Trapeze – always on time with MDS

Online journey planning specialist Trapeze opts for MDS Technologies to deploy SaaS

Trapeze supplies online journey planning systems to over half of the UK’s traveline regions, enabling travellers to plan door-to-door journeys using public transport. Their contracts are to provide a 24/7 service so they demand utmost reliability and the most efficient service. It was natural, therefore, to turn to specialist data centres operator MDS Technologies to host its servers.

Running several co-located racks at their Corsham facility, MDS Technologies host the servers that process millions of queries each year, delivering essential passenger transport data that enable people to plan entire journeys online.

The safety and accessibility of that information is vital to the smooth running of the system, explains the company's ICT Manager, James Blannin. "On a weekly basis we receive information covering tens of thousands of bus, coach and train services which is processed into regional datasets.  These datasets are then uploaded to the servers hosted at MDS.  The reputation of Trapeze and our Traveline clients is heavily dependent upon the reliability and resilience of the MDS solution."

Blannin says Trapeze has been impressed by the flexibility of the service offered by MDS, which enables them to run the system from its own offices while being able to call on the technical expertise of the MDS team at any time. "MDS are very flexible and the solution they provide us with is completely tailored to suit our needs. I can’t say enough good things about them and how helpful the whole team has been, from the Managing Director, Phil Dawson, down to the junior IT staff. On a technical level it seems there's nothing that they can’t do - I certainly haven't found anything!"

MDS TECHNOLOGIES GOES ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY FOR BIRMINGHAM WOMEN'S HOSPITAL

MDS Technologies continue to demonstrate outstanding commitment to clients after Birmingham Women’s Hospital declared the data centre specialist had exceeded expectations and gone well beyond its remit.

Birmingham Women’s Hospital is one of only two Trusts in the country dedicated to women’s healthcare. When MDS undertook a contract to host and manage the hospital’s website and content management system in 2004, it had a real challenge on its hands.

“We were looking for more than just hosting for our website, what we needed was a company that was capable of hosting our website and the system that runs it,” said Emma Barton, Web Development Manager at Birmingham Women’s Hospital.

What complicated this usually straight forward request though, were the extremely strict security protocols put in place by the NHS.

“With higher security considerations than most organisations, what we needed was a company that could help us work around these and allow us maximum freedom and flexibility to make daily changes to the website – MDS provided this and much more.”

Explaining how MDS facilitated Birmingham Women’s Hospital’s requirements, Phil Dawson, MDS’ MD, added: “In a normal set-up of this kind, every change made to a website at the client’s end would be copied across to the user-facing website using an online application, both of which are hosted at MDS. However, stringent IT security meant changes were unable to be made in this way.

“Consequently we developed a system where changes made to the website at the hospital’s end are automatically replicated, saved and written to the site via an automated FTP process. This process updates the changes at our end every 15 minutes.”

As Emma stressed: “It wasn’t just a case of plain web hosting or database access – we really did need quite a lot more from MDS.”

Because of the complexity of the job however, teething problems were to be expected, but Emma explained that this is where MDS came into their own.

“In the early days of setting the system up, we had a problem with the replication process of the log-files, for example. We were unable to figure it out but MDS had a look at it and sorted it out for us – they really went over and above what we had asked of them.

“What’s more, when I went on maternity leave, MDS simply filled my role as Data Base Administrator, which was very impressive.”

Summarising the hospital’s relationship with MDS, Emma concluded: “They have always been extremely professional and very patient - everything runs smoothly and quite frankly, we’ve found them excellent”.