14 Jul 2006

InTechnology seals £1m deal with Dentons to provide data protection as firm reviews infrastructure

Top 20 UK firm Denton Wilde Sapte has signed a deal worth nearly £1m with managed services provider InTechnology for data backup and archiving. The move is part of an overhaul of the firm’s internal IT infrastructure.

Dentons will use the InTechnology VBAK service to back up critical data from its London head office and 13 global offices, transferring encrypted information online to its off-site data centre. Less business-critical data will be archived with the InTechnology data archiving service. Services will be charged on a pay-as-you-go model, based on the amount of data being transferred and stored.

Neil Pamment, IT director at Denton Wilde Sapte, cited the cost savings, fast data retrieval and expertise offered by InTechnology as factors in the firm’s decision.

“The sheer volume of data we handle has grown exponentially, as has the absolute need to be able to access specific pieces of data at the push of a button.

“Approximately 70% of all data becomes inactive within 30 days of creation and we needed to be able to differentiate between this and the absolutely critical data at the heart of our business,” he said.

Earlier this year the firm signed a deal with telecommunications provider Telstra Europe to host its critical data off-site, replacing its in-house disaster recovery system as it moved from two London offices into one, to save data administration costs, increase security and provide 24/7 access.

Dentons has also built a new HP Blade server system and upgraded the local area network between its offices and the data site.

“The business is consolidating its buildings, which led to a review of the infrastructure. We now have a platform for development with a secure central infrastructure,” said Pamment.

The plan for the next 12 to 18 months is to focus on exchanging information directly with clients to “give them information in any format they require”.

Author: Bridget Meagher