Amoria Bond – A Global, Multi-Office Executive Search Company Case Study: How a Cloud

Computing Solution Provided a Resilient, Redundant, Secure and Highly Available IT

Platform for 80 Users over 4 Offices

Company Background

Amoria Bond, a

multinational, multi-

award-winning Recruitment and Executive Search Services

firm, provides specialist and bespoke contract/freelance

and permanent recruitment services into a number of

impressive private sector clients, specialising in IT and IT

Management, Banking and Finance, Engineering and

Power, and SAP/ERP sectors. Clients include household

names, multinational retailers, and SAP. The company is

listed in the Recruiter FAST 50 list as a result of their rapid

expansion.

The company commenced trading in 2006 and engaged

Quest to provide and manage their IT platform. Quest has

seen the company grow from the 5 user firm it started out

as to the multinational brand it has become; the company

now employs around 90 members of staff spread across

multiple offices, including Manchester (Head Office),

London, Amsterdam, Cologne, and Singapore.

Existing IT Solution Amoria Bond went through a number of phases with their

IT thanks to their incredibly impressive growth. Following

multiple upgrades and server rollouts, the infrastructure at

60 users included Microsoft Windows File Servers, Terminal

Servers, an Exchange Server, and a Microsoft SQL Database

Server. Applications used were Microsoft Office, generic

day-to-day office applications, and their recruitment

database, RDB ProNet. At 60 users, and two new offices on

the cards, the decision was made to move to “the cloud” as

too much strain was being placed upon the Manchester

connections, and the existing infrastructure offered little in

terms of office survivability, resilience, or redundancy.

Requirements and Primary Concerns After a detailed discussion with the business, including the

Management Team and the Users, Quest Cloud Solutions

Ltd identified four key areas of concern that the company

had in mind for the new system;

Resilience, Redundancy, and Availability

Given that Amoria Bond works in the fast-paced

recruitment sector, the company knew they needed an IT

platform that would be resilient against hardware failure,

and highly available to ensure maximum productivity and

profitability. Remote/home working was already offered,

but felt clunky due to the huge strain the additional offices

were placing on the Manchester office connection. Data

redundancy was of utmost importance as the company

relies heavily upon their recruitment data to make their

tight deadlines.

Security, Backup, and Disaster Recovery Planning

Amoria Bond’s database is the company’s lifeblood and

incredibly valuable to them, but also to their competitors.

Industrial espionage is a real concern and therefore they

needed a solution that would be very well protected both

physically and virtually. In addition to this, the solution

needed to account for a disaster recovery plan if the data

was to become corrupt or sabotaged.

Connectivity and Bandwidth

The existing offices were already straining the connections

into the Manchester Head Office; with two new offices on

the cards, a solution which would remove that strain was

needed.

Scalability, including Hardware & Software Upgrades

Thanks to their substantial growth, Amoria Bond had

already been through a number of hardware and software

upgrades; Quest had provided them with a recent

traditional IT proposal which allowed for additional growth;

however it came in at over £120k over three years and

required substantial upfront investment. Amoria Bond

wanted a solution that would scale with their business

without the need for future-proofing their hardware and

software purchases upfront.

Our Solution The proposed solution effectively replicated Amoria Bond’s

existing infrastructure as detailed previously, but with

cloud-based Virtual Private Servers (VPS) rather than

physical hardware.

Resilience, Redundancy, and Availability

Utilising the Quest Cloud platform meant that the solution

would be highly available, making use of the datacentre’s

redundant power, resilient and redundant super-fast

Internet connectivity, and state-of-the-art fire suppression

technology. Incredibly smart resilience features within the

VMware virtualisation platform meant that each VPS would

draw its computing resources from a series of physical host

servers; as a result, the VPS would be protected against

physical host server failure; if one of the physical host

servers in the cloud platform started to fail, monitoring

tools within VMware would move the VPS to another

functioning server to ensure it kept running. A RAID

configuration was used for the data storage in Quest’s

Storage Area Network (SAN), ensuring a high level of data

resilience and an efficient read/write speed.

Quest Cloud

Email

Server

(VM)

File

Server/

Domain

Controller

(VM)

Terminal

Server

(VM)

Head Office

(Manchester)

London Office

#1

Internet

Connection

Singapore Office –

Utilising WAN Acceleration

Technology here and

in the Quest Cloud Platform

*Further explained in the

“Benefits to the Company”

Section

Database

Server

(VM)

Internet

Connection

London Office

#2

Internet

Connection

Internet

Connection

Security, Backup, and Disaster Recovery Planning

The cloud solution proposed to the client included an IT-

related backup plan through the use of Microsoft’s Shadow

Copy, which meant the system would take snap-shots of

the system at regular intervals. This would allow users to

go back in time and manually retrieve individually deleted

and/or modified files, up to around 30 days’ previously, as

well as provide the company as a whole with the ability to

restore to one of many potential restore points following a

major issue.

Connectivity and Bandwidth

The connectivity network within the Datacentre provides

the Quest Cloud platform with access to two separate 10

Gigabit networks, provided by two different Internet

Service Providers (ISPs); this provides the cloud platform

with resilient and redundant bandwidth and lightning-fast

connectivity. As a result of hosting the IT platform in the

Quest Cloud network, users at all offices would now

connect to the cloud platform via their own office’s

connections.

Scalability, including Hardware & Software Upgrades

A benefit of using virtualisation and VPS technology was

that the VPS could be upgraded on-the-fly as and when

needed, without the need for CAPEX, providing a truly

scalable solution that would grow and shrink with the

business. In addition, the company would now benefit

from usage-based licensing, meaning Microsoft licensing

would receive free rolling upgrades as and when desired by

the business, with the hardware upgraded when needed.

Benefits to the Company The successful and well-planned rollout and migration of

this solution ensured the minimum amount of downtime

possible while providing the company with a highly

available hosted IT platform that is resilient, redundant,

ultra-secure and highly available. The business now also

benefits from rolling hardware upgrades as required by

existing installed software, and software upgrades when

desired by the company, and the business now has

complete peace of mind in regards to the physical and

virtual security of their service network. As a result, each

office has access to a centralised server environment but

isn’t relying on the Main Office to be available, resulting in

increased productivity and morale within the workforce,

and therefore increased the company’s turnover.

Thanks to Quest Cloud Solutions Ltd.’s ability to think

outside of the box and develop a tailored solution based on

the company’s needs, wants, budget, and existing concerns,

Amoria Bond now benefits from a highly available IT

platform that exactly fits their needs. As a result, the

company has since expanded to 90 users, and successfully

opened an office in Singapore; this has been made possible

by utilising state-of-the-art Cisco WAN (Wide Area

Network) Acceleration technology, which has dramatically

reduced the latency that was present between the

Singapore office and the Quest datacentre (due to the

substantial geographic distance between them).

For information on how your business could benefit from

a tailored cloud solution, please have a look at our

website and blog at www.questcloudcomputing.co.uk, or

get in touch with our Sales Team on 0845 521 6000, or

email us at info@questcloud.co.uk.