• FRP Advisory had the advantage of starting from the ground up with a new infrastructure, which meant it could leverage more recent technologies, as well as design resilience, into every part of its infrastructure at a compelling cost. Contract negotiations for the inter-office data network included backup fail-over lines for a competitive price.
• Using an on-demand based private Cloud Server infrastructure for FRP’s core business applications and servers, meant that a very high level of resilience was already built into Cloud Data’s server Docklands operations and no capital investment was required by FRP.
• The Private Cloud’s inherent resilience means that every one of FRP’s servers is snapshot every five minutes during the day. Those snapshots are automatically moved to a separate physical location and are available to be restored within five minutes after a major event. This also means that FRP are able to go back in time on the virtual infrastructure to resolve problems or major deletions and corruptions of servers. The five minute images are stored for 24 hours and then three snapshots from the previous day are kept - 7am, noon and 7pm – for a week. Beyond that, the snapshots are kept weekly and then monthly should FRP need to recover to a longer historical date. The snapshots of entire servers require an enormous amount of storage, which is included in FRP’s monthly hosting costs from its Cloud service provider.

Mark Iwaszko added:
“Exponential-e said they would guarantee delivery which was critical for FRP’s MBO to be a success. The challenge was immense due to the timeframe and I had the needs of nine offices and over 200 staff to consider, and failure was not an option. The network is a key component for FRP’s communication and we needed the right provider to deliver a network that was revolutionary.

The tender process was swift and Exponential-e demonstrated they wanted to partner with us and not just sell us a solution. The offering was technically and commercially compelling but seemed too good to be true."

Mark Iwaszko continued:
"The project team was excellent from sign-off to delivery. I have been involved with IT and telecoms for longer than I care to remember and for telecoms standards this project had to be delivered in a ridiculously short space of time.

FRP had to be very demanding and the team at Exponential-e were true to their word - they delivered a cutting-edge platform. Our model of a fully hosted private Cloud has worked extremely well for us. We are fairly revolutionary in putting all our information on a private Cloud and using new technologies to aid our business. We have signed a long-term contract with Exponential-e and they have proved to be an excellent partner.

Exponential-e offered a platform that was technically and financially compelling and understood the need for a swift deployment. They were the only company that guaranteed to meet the deadlines and their technology was cutting-edge."

Mark Iwaszko IT Director - FRP Advisory