As the private v public Cloud debate rumbles on, one Scottish recruitment consultancy has chosen to migrate its IT infrastructure to a private rather than public Cloud environment because the level of control and accessibility that the model provided meant it had “the best of both worlds”.
Head Resourcing, which is based in Edinburgh and specialises in the placement of IT staff as well as project and change management personnel, decided to move its core back-end systems into its longstanding internet service provider Lumison’s data centre at the start of this year.
The technology included six servers, a Microsoft Exchange email system and a customer database, which had all previously been located on site, although support was provided by a third party supplier.
Gordon Adam, the firm’s managing director, admits that the private v public Cloud model deabte was at the heart of the firm's decision making. He says:
Going down the private Cloud route, however, appeared less of a risky proposition, not least because it gave the organisation more control over its data:
But the move to a private Cloud environment has also provided Head Resourcing with other advantages. In disaster recovery terms, for example, the firm no longer has to rely on staff members’ taking back-up tapes home once a week for safe keeping or to wait a couple of days for systems to be recovered if they go down. Because its ISP has a mirrored data centre in the south of England, if anything goes wrong, systems and data can now be recovered immediately.
Other benefits, however, include staff being able to access systems more quickly - although the corporate network has had to be upgraded to cope with the extra demands placed on bandwidth - and the possibility of being able to open up offices more swiftly as the company continues to expand. It has grown its turnover from £10 million three years ago to £50 million now and currently employs 50 staff.
Adam says:
Moreover, although he believes that it is “probably no cheaper” to pay upfront for upgrading servers every three years than it is to pay longer-term monthly subscription fees, savings do come from reductions in IT support costs and increased staff productivity as a result of having more efficient systems in place. Adams says:
And the impact of such a situation should not be underestimated. Adams concludes:
