Case Studies

Old Quay
Teignmouth
Devon TQ14 8EU
www.pikeward.co.uk

Pike Ward provides a wide range of services to the shipping industry, including ship broking, ship agenting and cargo supervision. From its main office in Teignmouth the company is well positioned to serve other ports in Devon, including Bideford and Dartmouth.

The client’s brief

The company was using a very old Windows NT 4.0 server with several Windows 98 workstations. It was recognised that the old exchange server needed replacement to keep up with security updates and system enhancements. Microsoft had ceased to support NT 4, no longer developing system fixes or upgrades, and viruses were getting through the old virus protection system.

A stable system is absolutely critical to the smooth operation of Pike Ward’s business. Access to the system is needed 24x7 in order to deal with emergency shipping situations and the office receives an average 100 e-mails a day including e-mails from ships at sea.

The company also asked us to provide robust technical support.

Our solution

We installed an HP Proliant ML350 with Windows 2003 SBS Server, with dual Xeon processors and 3gb of memory for optimum performance.

We implemented RAID 5 configuration consisting of five 36gb SCSI hard drives running at 15,000rpm and an LTO 100-200gb tape backup drive system in conjunction with Computer Associates’ Arcserve SBS Backup.

Watchguard Firebox SoHo Series was installed for internet security and we replaced the PC network with HP desktops running Windows XP Pro. An HP Carepack now ensures that, in the event of a hardware failure, HP will deliver a replacement part within four hours.

Finally, we put in place a support contract based on a four-hour response, four-hour fix or loan on all technical issues.

Benefits to the client

Pike Ward now has a complete remote desktop facility, enabling authorised agents to access the system from any internet workstation running Windows 2000/XP. In emergency situations they can remote in any time of night or day to find out ships positions and pass on critical information. Agents now have the facility to access all communications to the office.