Pyramid8

Pyramid8 is a UK-based recruitment consultancy that specialises in providing local recruitment services for permanent and temporary staffing requirements in the North of England. They came to Croft for a robust data backup and recovery solution.

Located in West Yorkshire in the city of Leeds, Pyramid8 is a small but extremely data-dependent firm. They provide talent to organisations of all sizes, including the National Health Service (NHS), so having a robust data backup and recovery solution was vital for smooth operations. As the firm continued to add clients and applicants, the amount of data backed up through its onsite, tape-based system expanded as well.

As headaches involved in managing this data influx rose, it became clear that manual tape backup – with no offsite solution and no plan for data recovery – was becoming too risky, inefficient, and cost-prohibitive.

The Challenge

These factors led Pyramid8 to seek a more reliable and economical backup and recovery system – one that the firm could call upon for speedy data restoration in the face of a major disaster.

In response to these concerns, Andrew Willsher, Director of Finance and Operations at Pyramid8, first tried shifting from tape to an electronic disk-based solution. However, this did not fully address the firm’s concerns.

The Solution

Willsher next contacted our team at Croft to take over the full management of Pyramid8’s data storage and recovery needs with a backup and recovery solution. Based on our expertise, we recommended our Managed Cloud-based Backup solution.

Willsher was so impressed with Croft and our Managed Cloud Backup that he chose to partner with us right away, needing no further investigation of competitive options.

Pyramid8 highlighted the following capabilities as key factors for selecting the solution:

• Cloud-based offsite backup for disaster recovery
• Device agnostic support for a wide range of computing devices including laptops Simple, centralised backup that eliminates the need for multiple-point solutions
• Highly scalable design that expands as the company’s needs require
• Ability to reduce the cost of backup
• NIST FIPS 140-2 certified security with AES-256 encryption in-flight and at-rest.

By offering dramatically faster and more reliable backups and recoveries, the new solution from Croft promised to offer significant advantages for data protection.

Croft is a local IT services provider that we completely trust. Not only do we like the fact that they are in our local area, but we also appreciate that they are responsive. When we phone them, they know us and offer very personalised service. What’s more, the Croft-managed data protection solution offers a managed service capability, which means that we no longer have to worry about how to backup and restore our data since that’s all handled by the Croft team.

Andrew Willsher
Director of Finance and Operations, Pyramid8

The Results

Croft’s cloud backup service is now deployed across Pyramid8’s organisation, covering one server that supports two SQL databases – one for client data and one for applicant data – stored as flat files in programs such as Microsoft Word.

Three years after implementing the Croft-data protection solution, Pyramid8 experienced an unthinkable disaster that endangered all of their data.

In March 2014, Pyramid8’s office building collapsed during a neighbouring tenants’ renovations. The firm’s servers became inaccessible, buried under piles of rubble.

Willsher immediately called Croft to begin data recovery on the Saturday that the disaster occurred. By the time Willsher reached the office, our experts were already on site.

By the following Monday morning at 9:00 AM – just 48 hours after the collapse – Croft had not only made all of the firm’s data available again, but the IT provider had also set up Pyramid8’s staff to use workspaces in one of our offices.

Due to the quick response of our team and our solution, zero downtime was experienced and Pyramid8’s team was able to get fully up and running very quickly.

Without our solution, the firm would have had to wait four weeks until the server was recovered from the collapsed building, which would have significantly impacted the firm’s business – including an estimated £50,000 in lost revenue.

By partnering with Croft for data protection services, Pyramid8 can rely on a solution that they know works, boosting their level of confidence in their data security tremendously.