Cockburn Lucas are a Nottingham based wealth management company that have grown substantially over the past year. Their requirement for more space meant they had to move to larger premises and since the existing hardware was over 3 years old - the decision was made to replace the entire infrastructure.

The existing server was a Windows Small Business Server 2003 installation. There were intermittent issues with the server crashing (blue screens) and the disk usage was approaching capacity.

The users were occasionally complaining of slow access times when opening files from the server and their main line of business application was utilizing most of the CPU time on the single CPU inside the server.

The tape based backup system was over capacity and backups were running onto 2 tapes which made tape rotation difficult and increased the time taken to recover a file significantly.

The management wanted better collaboration between the users and the remote access was limited to email only.

Overview

• Unified Messaging integration

• Increased fault tolerance

• Enhanced user experience

• Hardware platform now supported

A complete system upgrade with new Microsoft Windows 7 desktop and laptop computers, combined with SBS 2011 provided the perfect solution. Remote connectivity using Remote Web Workplace, now provides a central web based portal to each Financial Advisors emails, data shares and individual and company calendars within a single, secure logon.

The latest version of Microsoft Exchange 2010 server provides email archiving for compliance and simple management of the large email data stores associated with keeping important, accurate records of client communications. Retrievable in an instance whether working in the office or at a remote location.

With the simplified and all-encompassing backup system within SBS 2011, the data is now made securely available off-site as part of Cockburn Lucas’s business continuity plan. An important element of providing a guaranteed, on-time service to their clients.

PhillipsTaylorBrown worked closely with Cockburn Lucas to understand their businesses needs and to develop their IT strategy to meet these requirements. It was a busy time for Cockburn Lucas, moving premises and upgrading IT systems at the same time, whilst coping with a network reaching capacity and continuing to provide their high level of professional services.

The migration from the old server to the new SBS 2011 system was made smooth with a rapid deployment using the latest validation and migration tools built in to SBS 2011. Combined with a new PC network based upon the latest Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010 PCs the IT system is now a robust, resilient infrastructure with the capacity to aid the further growth of Cockburn Lucas.