January 2008

Senior Management Team Strengthened

AssurIT has appointed two new Directors to join the Senior Management Team at AssurIT as the organisation continues to enjoy success. .

Steve Ellis joins, as Managing Director, to lead the organisation into a phase of expansion and towards offering a broader range of solutions that will position the company perfectly to take full advantage of the continued trend towards strategic IT out-tasking in the mid-market. Steve has made an investment in the organisation and has taken a share of the ownership.

With over 20 years background in the mid-range I.T market place Steve brings an invaluable mix of experience, focus and enthusiasm to AssurIT that has seen him take similar organisations to the top of their sector in terms of business growth and customer service.

Steve Ellis was keen to explain the potential he sees at AssurIT.

"AssurIT has a strong reputation for service delivery in the IBM mid-range market place. A number of major UK companies rely on us to run their IT systems or to deliver their High Availability environment. There are some very high profile organisations that depend entirely on us if their production systems fail. IBM even contracts us to do the same for their customer under the IBM SHARP offering".

"Over the next 18 months we will use that base to expand our offerings. The focus will be very much on Managed Service and Support solutions, built, priced and delivered in a flexible way. Given the infrastructure and skills we already have in place it is important for us to develop new Managed Service based solutions, such as Software as a Service, that will enable us to maximise that investment. We have already started making plans to deliver some great applications based on us hosting the middleware, operating system and hardware components and partnering with innovative ISV's. Customers really like the principle of taking Software as a 'Pay as you Go' service and we will start to provide Managed Service solutions around the niche areas that just haven't been available before".

"We have also started to win business in the provision of Managed Helpdesk solutions to small I.T organisations wanting to offer their customer a professional 24 x 7 Helpdesk service. I see this area as a key area for future success and we have worked hard to build a service that they can clearly see the benefits of using at a price that makes it really attractive".

"Overall AssurIT aims to deliver a really high standard of service at a great price. We are very easy to do business with and we offer outstanding value for money. For me that makes AssurIT a great proposition for the customers in our market place".

Spencer Lea has also joined AssurIT as Sales Director, to focus on the Sales and Marketing strategy for the expansion of the organisation.

April 2008

NGK signs 3 year SHARP iSeries HA managed service contract

NGK Spark Plugs has signed a 3 year agreement with IBM and AssurIT to deliver a fully managed HA solution for its production System i5 environment. The service protects the core business application, provided by Infor

May 2008

Centresoft signs a 3 year SHARP System I managed service contract

Centresoft, the UK's leading Games and Entertainment distributor, has signed a 3 year agreement with IBM and AssurIT to provide a fully managed System i managed service solution. The service ensures that Centresoft can run core business systems in the event a of major systems failure with minimum impact to the business

June 2008

Major high street retailer signs 3 year IBM SHARP contract

A major high street chain store, leading in the 'pay weekly' market place has signed an agreement with IBM and AssurIT to provide a fully managed HA service for it's core iSeries systems.

June 2008

Tradex turns to IBM and AssurIT for System I managed service

Tradex, the leading car insurance specialists, have taken the SHARP HA service from IBM and AssurIT to protect it's core business systems.

August 2008

Global Financial Institution Signs 3 Year Managed Service and SHARP Contract

Operating from 40 offices around the World, this major Financial Institution has been in existence for over 200 years.

They provide the highest quality financial advice and execution expertise, encompassing Mergers & Acquisitions, Restructuring, Private Placements, Privatisations, and Equity Capital Markets.

They have a core banking application which runs on IBM System i platform which is business critical and needs to be available 24 x 7 x 365 to ensure continuity of service in key markets.

The AssurIT contract covers two key areas.

Firstly, the 24 x 7 remote management and operation of the System i machine, it's operating system, applications and date.

Secondly, the provision of an IBM SHARP High Availability service to provide real-time mirroring protection of the production system to an IBM data centre, all managed by AssurIT.

AssurIT's CEO Stephen Morris is delighted with the agreement being signed.

"This is a significant new customer for AssurIT and IBM BC&RS, they are a truly global organisation and a household name. After a long and careful selection process they have chosen us to be a key partner for at least the next 3 years, I think this is a tremendous reflection of the trust they place in AssurIT. They selected AssurIT and IBM based on our track record and the high level of service we provide, we also offered superb value for money and that was also a key factor in the decision. We are looking forward to a successful and long-term partnership."

August 2008

Tradex extends AssurIT managed service

Tradex Insurance has entered into a long term agreement with AssurIT to provide a managed service for the core production systems and DR facilities. This is a natural extension for Tradex having taken the IBM SHARP service from AssurIT earlier in the year.

September 2008

Major investment house opts for AssurIT on-site iSeries support

A major name in the world of Investment banking has taken AssurIT's new on-site support offering in a 2 year contract. The service delivers a full time dedicated head who spends 1 or 2 days per week on site, and provides dedicated support remotely for the rest of the week. This enables the client to gain all the advantages of a personal on-site relationship without the expense of a permanent staff member.

October 2008

Leading insurer extends AssurIT managed service contract

Domestic and General, the UK's leading specialist provider of extended warranty cover for electrical domestic appliances, has taken a full time dedicated head from AssurIT to provide a mixture of on-site and off-site services. This enables significant cost savings whilst maintaining a high level of support

December 2008

PHS the latest signing for AssurIT

PHS, the leading workplace services provider, has entered into a long term agreement with AssurIT, for the provision of a fully managed iSeries service. AssurIT will be running the system which provides business critical services, from January 2009.

December 2008

AssurIT are delighted to announce a recently formed alliance with SmallNet Consulting Ltd.

The alliance will enable AssurIT to consult upon and deliver IBM Datastage projects to companies across the UK and Ireland.

The DataStage suite of products were acquired in 2005 by IBM through the purchase of Ascential Software and delivers these unique capabilities: The powerful ETL solution supports the collection, integration and transformation of large volumes of data, with data structures ranging from simple to highly complex. IBM InfoSphere DataStage manages data arriving in real-time as well as data received on a periodic or scheduled basis.

The scalable platform enables companies to solve large-scale business problems through high-performance processing of massive data volumes. By leveraging the parallel processing capabilities of multiprocessor hardware platforms, IBM InfoSphere DataStage Enterprise Edition can scale to satisfy the demands of ever-growing data volumes, stringent real-time requirements, and ever shrinking batch windows.

Comprehensive source and target support for a virtually unlimited number of heterogeneous data sources and targets in a single job includes text files; complex data structures in XML; ERP systems such as SAP and PeopleSoft; almost any database (including partitioned databases); web services; and business intelligence tools like SAS.

Spencer Lea, Sales Director at AssurIT comments 'This alliance enables us to deliver real value to existing and new AssurIT customers who are looking to integrate and transform large volumes of data within their business. We have experience of delivering data migration projects on ERP platforms such as SAP, Peoplesoft and Lawson and can prove tangible cost savings and faster time to market. I'm very excited about this new alliance and look forward to working alongside IBM and its customers'.

December 2008

Paragon trusts in AssurIT

Paragon Mortgages have entered into a support agreement with AssurIT for 'Out of Hours' systems monitoring, starting in November 2008.