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Press release:

Ref: OGI0278
3rd August 2011

 

Roland Smith Act Out Disaster Recovery with Open GI

 

Specialist insurance broker Roland Smith a Police Mutual Company has successfully completed their periodic live disaster recovery test with Open GI as part of their business resilience plan.

Insurance broker Roland Smith, a Police Mutual Company, decided to test their disaster recovery plan, which incorporated the Open GI Business Continuity Solution, to ensure they could continue to trade in the event of an unforeseen disruption to their business.  The Open GI Business Continuity Solution supplements clients’ existing maintenance including the provision of servers on site at an agreed location, within 48 hours of disaster notification.

Roland Smith invoked their Business Continuity Plan with Open GI as a test to establish the response times of Open GI and the feasibility of delivering backup data in a timely fashion to the Roland Smith disaster recovery test site. It was agreed that the test would be treated as a ‘Real Disaster Recovery’ situation, to evaluate the end-to-end processes and response times.

Lee Duggan, IT Manager at Roland Smith, commented: “We notified Open GI of a disaster recovery situation at 8.30am, within two hours the engineer was on site.  Once the server had been restored, a suitable Internet connection was made available by our IT department and through this the Open GI engineer was able to test connectivity to Worcester (Open GI), to enable any remote diagnostics to be performed along with retrieval of any updates or rate files.”

“The test day was a resounding success and provided valuable results which will enable us to future proof our continuity plan.  From the engineer arriving onsite to us and being back in business, we were operational within 90 minutes.”

Simon Hughes, Sales and Marketing Director, Open GI, said: “Many Open GI brokers understand the importance of Business Continuity and have opted for our solution.  It’s great to see Roland Smith going a step further to assure their confidence in client maintenance by carrying out a live trial to ensure the effectiveness of the plan.  We were keen to emulate what would happen in a real event and to ensure this, only two people within Open GI were aware this was a test and not a real disaster.”

For More Information about Open GI:
Adele Clarkson
Marketing and PR Manager
Open GI
Tel: +44 (0)1905 754455
email: adele.clarkson@opengi.co.uk

 

 

Notes to Editors:

Open GI supplies market leading IT solutions to insurance brokers across the UK & Ireland. With 20,000 users in around 2,000 firms, the company has a 40% share of the UK broker market and is committed to technological innovation. Open GI technology enables personal and commercial lines brokers trading in standard and niche markets to streamline business activity and become more profitable. With a workforce of 350 people and a 30-year heritage, the company enjoys a strong financial performance. For the year ended 31st May 2010 Open GI reported revenues of £35.0 million and an operating profit of £21.1 million.