Financial / Investment

Case Study

Customer name: Dart Capital
Industry: Financial Services
Project name: Server and PC project

Company Background
Dart Capital has an established reputation as a professional wealth manager.  Existing clients are private individuals, companies & trusts who recognise and value the benefits of Dart Capital’s very personal financial planning and investment management service.  The experienced, professional investment team are based in City offices in Eastcheap.

Customer Issue
Dart Capital decided to review its IT network infrastructure in 2011, as it was felt that the current server infrastructure, which was based on a hosted platform, was no longer providing the performance or reliability that Dart’s business required.  In addition, Dart were keen to ensure that all PCs had a simple-to-use interface and a locked down configuration.

Solution Chosen
Connect Systems carried out a full audit of Dart’s IT systems and worked with Dart to consider a number of technology options for their business moving forward.  These included options for hosted or in-house servers and for physical or virtual desktops.  Dart’s personal investment management approach meant that there was a wide range of different software in use on individual PCs, and as such a virtual desktop solution did not provide a good fit.  After considering the benefits and costs of all options, it was jointly agreed that an in-house server solution with physical PCs, locked down via group policies, would be the best solution for Dart.  The new server infrastructure was based on VMWare virtualisation technology, which allowed Dart to run several servers with different operating systems on a single hardware platform.   The new technology was pre-configured and fully tested before Dart’s data, email and databases were cutover at an agreed weekend.

Solution Benefits
The project has resulted in a network infrastructure which runs faster, is much more reliable and has a uniform and professional look and feel to it. In addition the new virtualised server technology offers greatly enhanced disaster recovery capabilities.  The project was delivered on schedule with the project plan and within the budget costs specified.

Client Comment

“Working with Connect Systems has been a genuine pleasure. We have found the staff to be technically competent, reliable and personable. The project was conducted professionally and most importantly the outcome, in terms of performance and reliability of our system, has been excellent.”