Fender amps up business continuity

Fender Musical Instruments Europe is using secure managed services to protect business critical application delivery across its regional operations.

The instrument maker, famous for iconic electric guitars like the Stratocaster, serves key applications for its European organisation including UK, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden from its London headquarters.

Business expansion into other parts of Europe led it to sign up to new hosting services from data centre provider, Telecity to ensure its IT systems were fully protected against any risk of downtime.

Dave Skorecki, Fender Europe's infrastructure manager said: "Fender Europe has grown significantly over the last 10 years and, to support our continued expansion, we needed to reassess our business continuity plans."

He said the company had worked with the data centre provider before, through a third party already. "We knew they could deliver the highly secure, reliable data centre facilities we needed," Skorecki added.

The services include remote back-up and round-the-clock first line support.

The deal has also given Fender assurance that future data centre needs can be accommodated cost effectively.

"They also have the capacity for us to expand as and when we need to, meaning they can meet all our future requirements," he said. "We put a huge amount of trust in Telecity to ensure our equipment is maintained 24/7, and we've been happy with the service they have provided."

The hosted services also offer high levels of physical security with security guards and CCTV operational in the facilities at all times. Swipe cards and biometric scans are required for any visitors to the facilities as well.