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Founded in 1947, The British Horse Society (BHS) is the UK's largest and most influential equestrian charity, dedicated to promoting the interests of all horses and those who care about them. With around 160 staff, 1,200 volunteers, and over 115,000 members, the BHS is a membership-based organisation focused on education, welfare, access, and safety. They are committed to ensuring that horses live healthy, happy lives and that equestrian enthusiasts are well-supported and informed.

Results

The implementation of boxxe's backup and disaster recovery (DR) solution has significantly improved the BHS's IT resilience and data security. The new system ensures that data is replicated to three separate and secure locations, facilitating rapid recovery and minimising downtime. The management and use of the system have become more straightforward, allowing the BHS team to focus on their core mission of equine welfare. The upgraded internet connections have eliminated bottlenecks, ensuring efficient data handling. Overall, the enhanced backup and DR capabilities have provided the BHS with the confidence that their data is protected and their operations can continue smoothly, even in the face of unexpected disruptions.

Services Delivered

Secure hardware solutions deployed, with complete backup and disaster recovery.

Technologies Deployed

Included data replication every 15 minutes using Zerto.

Industry Sector

The British Horse Society is the largest equestrian charity in the UK.

Business Driver

The BHS needed to improve its backup and disaster recovery (DR), to ensure business continuity.

Man riding a horse

Challenge

The British Horse Society (BHS) faced significant risks with their existing backup and disaster recovery (DR) solution. The system was not fast enough, relied on a single 40 mbps link, and lacked the ability to retrieve individual files or quickly restore key systems. This inefficiency threatened business continuity, risking prolonged system outages and potential disruption in collecting membership direct debits.

Plan

The boxxe Group’s plan involved a comprehensive overhaul of BHS's backup and DR processes. The strategy included deploying Veeam software for local, on-site backups of users' PCs, which would then be replicated to an offsite data centre managed by boxxe. Additionally, Zerto software was implemented to replicate data every 15 minutes to another secure data centre. This approach ensured that BHS's data was stored in three physically separate and secure locations, eliminating the need for physical backup media movement and enhancing data security.

Approach

The boxxe Group team worked closely with Paul Perkins, Director of Technology at BHS, and his team to map out potential disaster recovery scenarios and response strategies. The approach focused on keeping the management of the system straightforward and user-friendly. Regular communication and collaboration ensured that the backup and DR solutions were tailored to BHS's specific needs, with a focus on reliability and speed.

Outcome

The implementation of the new backup and DR solution significantly improved BHS's ability to recover data quickly and efficiently. The system's management became simpler for the BHS team, and end users found the processes easy to navigate. With backups now replicated across three secure locations, BHS gained confidence in their data protection measures. Paul Perkins noted that a major restoration was successfully completed in under four hours, far exceeding the expected recovery time.

We have had to do a major restoration once because a patch was applied to our live CRM system in error. We couldn’t start up the CRM system, so had to recover it from a backup. It all worked perfectly, and very quickly – our agreement specified we would get it back within four hours, but it was a lot faster than that.

I would absolutely recommend the boxxe Group. Their approach is fantastic, and their people are really, really easy to deal with. I’m really confident in the backup and DR solution, and it’s good that I can give that confidence to our management and trustees.

Paul Perkins
Director of Technology
The British Horse Society

Get In Touch

Ready to secure your organisation's data and ensure business continuity? Contact boxxe today to learn how our backup and disaster recovery solutions can protect your critical systems and data.

0330 236 9429
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