GMP Securities Europe LLP (GMP Europe) has approximately 40 staff operating from the West End and numerous overseas offices in Canada, USA and Australia.

Initially a Disaster Recovery (DR) client, GMP Europe looked thereafter, to bolt on an outsourced IT support solution offering an end-to-end service.

“Moving IT provider is a daunting prospect but from the onset, Sentronex were very clear about what services they would offer and how they would go about providing them.  We were pleased with the way Sentronex tailored their coverage to suit our resourcing requirements.  Their confidence and expertise meant that the change-over process was straightforward and more importantly, painless.  We are very happy with the quality of the engineers and the overall friendliness of the Sentronex team.”

Thomas Spencer, Finance Officer

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THE CHALLENGE

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After conducting an initial business impact analysis, it became apparent that GMP Europe did not have full redundancy for their production environment.

“Sentronex spent a lot of time examining our business model and the day to day operations of the company.  They then created a thorough plan of how our BCP would work.  This eliminated the need for in-house Business Continuity consultants for us, resulting in considerable cost savings. 

Our agreement with Sentronex is bound by SLAs and they have always met these requirements with minimum disruption to the business.”

Adrian Butterworth, Head of Compliance & Legal

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THE SOLUTION

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Sentronex proposed a DR solution to mitigate these risks by providing the following:

• A detailed Business Continuity Plan (BCP), regular review meetings and awareness presentations
• DR Seating – powerbase for critical staff
• File data replication
• Offsite hosting for DR equipment
• Third party liaising
  

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A BCP was compiled to identify the requirements essential to keeping the business operating and minimising disruption to both GMP Europe’s customers and employees. 

The BCP identified the need for the following:

• A Powerbase at Sentronex’s DR facility in Southwark for 4 critical staff (primarily those using the Fidessa ETP trading environment), to ensure trading capability within 2 hours.

• A secure point to point connection setup between their office in the West End and Sentronex’s data centre to allow for replication of file data.  The DR hardware is also hosted at Sentronex’s data centre.

• By carrying out an in-depth analysis of their day to day operations, detailed information was collated to create profiles that are fully configured to the clients’ precise requirements.

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THE CHALLENGE

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As part of the service, Sentronex had to build a close working relationship with GMP Europe’s existing in-house IT department in Toronto.  It was necessary to establish clear boundaries and define exactly who was responsible for what. 

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THE SOLUTION

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Sentronex set up an initial and very comprehensive meeting to determine the roles of both Sentronex and GMP Europe’s Toronto IT support team. This process was made much easier by the good relationship Sentronex had already formed with GMP Europe.

The following components make up the services provided to GMP Europe:

• Sentronex provide an onsite resource three times per week to proactively assist users with any issues.
• GMP Europe staff has access to a pool of resources including desktop and senior engineers, both of which can be used for onsite support as well as remote support when required outside of scheduled onsite hours.

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• Through the provision of a dedicated Account Manager, regular review meetings are set up with GMP Europe to evaluate service delivery and how support calls are being dealt with.  As part of this service, an Account Director will regularly oversee this process and make sure the IT support process grows with the needs of the company.

• Sentronex monitors all production services.  Any faults or errors are immediately escalated to the London and Toronto offices for an agreed resolution.

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THE RESULT

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Before going live with their DR solution, GMP Europe was required to invoke their DR Service due to a power failure in their building.  Sentronex had GMP Europe up and running within a couple of  hours of invocation – critical applications such as Fidessa, email and file data were already configured, allowing staff to continue trading as normal.

GMP Europe has an IT solution that works and one that is regularly analysed and updated.

Sentronex works with several financial organisations so fully understands the pressures GMP Europe may face and realizes the need for a responsive IT Service. This knowledge makes the on-going services Sentronex offers to GMP Europe, all the more efficient.

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