...and business continuity.
We all think it’ll never happen to us, but is your company prepared for the unexpected? We’re not just talking about the major disasters like fires and floods: we should consider also the more likely incidents such as the JCB at the local road works ploughing through your telecoms cables. Any disruption to the working day can have a significantly negative impact on business, including sales, cash flow, credibility and production. Having plans for business continuity and for disaster recovery is the best way to minimise the impact of any unexpected event – from the minor to the catastrophic.
A comprehensive business continuity plan does not have to increase your business telecoms costs. Together, through risk-benefit analysis, we can design a bespoke solution to balance your needs against costs, and in conjunction with a review of all services we could even save you money. Demonstrating your business continuity capabilities through telecoms resilience indicates you have a complete failover strategy in place, and we have known insurers to reduce premiums on this basis.
HIGHnet can provide prioritised service levels on lines and services, and we have a range of products which can be used to build or enhance your BC/DR plans. The following examples give you a flavour of what we can offer, but no two businesses are identical so your solution needs to be tailored to your requirements. Our account managers are highly skilled in this area and can offer the advice and expertise you need at every step.
VOICE
- Analogue or ISDN line rental
Choose between Level 1, 2 and 3 Care; the higher the level, the quicker the fault will be dealt with by Openreach.
- ISDN30
Site Assurance provides peace of mind that in the event of a fault your calls will be re-routed to an alternative site within a contracted period.
DATA
- Enhanced Care
Guarantee to fix any broadband fault within 1 working day and promise to keep you updated with progress at least every 2 hours. If we fail on this commitment we will refund you twice the downtime. Please note; Level 3 Care is required on the analogue line.
- Platinum IP; the ultimate guarantee
Platinum IP is a unique service for customers of our Ultimate Broadband and Ultimate Voice products, guaranteeing a minimum level of data availability at all times through HIGHnet’s in-house monitoring. This service is ideal for customers who may lack confidence in access products for IP voice services and require the maximum availability for their data services. It is the first Service Level Agreement (SLA) for VoIP services available for our customers.
DATA – MULTI SITES
- MPLS Private Network
This technology allows you to securely connect all your company’s sites, and create a private data network using ADSL, SDSL, leased lines and/or any combination of these. Using ‘full mesh’ topography the loss of one site will not impact functionality at others and full continuity can be maintained with back-up servers as required. MPLS networks were once the exclusive territory of larger enterprises, but can now be provided at little more than the cost of standard ADSL circuits. For additional peace of mind, full Service Level Agreements are provided to guarantee availability and fix times.
VOICE RESILIENCE
- Option 1 –ISDN30 Diverse Routing - two ISDN30s delivered to the building not sharing a common path (e.g. from two different exchanges)
- Option 2 –SIP trunking as a back up to ISDN -IPDirectConnect (our SIP trunk service) can be accessed from any location using SIP registration, so it is easier to return to ‘business as usual’ from alternative premises. You are provided hardware with automatic failover; your outgoing calls are guaranteed. This is much more economical than Diverse Routing.
RESILIENT BROADBAND
Two circuits, one primary and one secondary, are provided in order to make sure there is a back up in the event of the primary circuit losing connection. The two circuits are provisioned from two different carriers (wherever possible) and managed from the network in order to ensure they use the same ip addresses.
VIRTUAL NUMBERSTraditionally, if your site is affected by a disaster, all calls are diverted to one number. Our Virtual Numbers, however, can be pre-configured to ring a group of numbers (fixed line and mobiles) simultaneously. So in the event of an emergency, all calls will be diverted to the specified group. If nobody picks up, it will fail over to voicemail. An additional benefit of the Virtual Number solution is access to a full call history via an online portal, so you can see all calls made, received and missed, allowing you to follow up any missed calls after the disaster.
MY INBOUND NUMBER
DR used to be restricted to larger corporate customers and cost prohibitive to the SME. However, with full online control of directing their inbound calls, the SME can exercise the option of sending employees home to take calls in the event of office evacuation or inability to access site due to transport difficulties, flooding or fire. Your existing geographic numbers are ported on to My Inbound Number, which gives you complete control over your incoming calls and where they are routed to via an online portal (www.myinbound.com). You can log on and redirect calls at any time, so in the event of an emergency at any site changes can be made instantly at the touch of a button.
Further BC can be built in by creating a call plan which has a failover number in the event of the preferred destination experiencing a line fault or PBX failure at site. In these circumstances the DR will be applied automatically, perhaps even before you realise you have a problem!
DR is also achieved by creating and agreeing a DR call plan in advance of it being required – e.g. call plan 01 may be created and built on the network in advance and it is ready to be immediately invoked by the user selecting ‘edit call plan’ and ‘activate call plan immediately’ if and when required. It is even possible to print out these call plans as evidence for e.g. insurance companies/customers to see that a business has considered and prepared for BC.
My Inbound Number is great for the SME, but with powerful features such as call recording, IVR (auto attendant) and call queuing, it is also ideally suited to large, multi-site business and call centres.
HOSTED TELEPHONY
With a hosted telephone system you have no physical hardware on your premises except for handsets, a network switch and a router. This means that in the event of a physical interruption at your site, the phone system (including features such as voicemail) is still fully functional as it remains live at the core of the network. We have a range of hosted telephone systems which come with a wide range of features (managed via an online portal) to enhance your company’s DR plans.
HOSTED IT
Hosted IT works much in the same way as hosted telephony; your server is hosted away from the premises so in the event of fire, flooding etc. the equipment is perfectly safe and secure. We can advise on the best options for your company, and we also provide a range of SaaS (Software as a Service) products through our partners.
With our fixed line and mobile deal (free inter-company calls), if you have a fault with your fixed line services the cost to divert the calls to mobiles is zero. Our hosted telephony services also have options such as fixed/mobile ‘twinning’ and voicemail to email. With our large range of state-of-the-art handsets, employees can remain in contact through phone and email and ensure optimum business continuity for the company.
