Established in 1989, JCC Lighting has grown to be a leading designer, manufacturer and supplier of commercial and domestic lighting. With operations in the UK, Middle East, Hong Kong, China, Italy and
Australia, the company prides its self on stocking a range of products worth £6m at any one time, with
more than 2000 products including LED lighting, traditional lanterns and spotlights, fire-rated downlights, track and spot systems and uplights.
JCC Lighting’s team at its main manufacturing hub, distribution centre and headoffice in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, is heavily reliant on its many IT systems to manage processes throughout the business – from sales orders (including quotations and technical advice) to distribution, logistics and billing. To ensure its IT facilities are reliable and capable for the multitude of tasks required of it, the company relies on the services and advice of outsourced IT specialist ramsac.
Before turning to ramsac for its IT support JCC Lighting had used the services of a small IT supplier, but the company felt a greater level of assistance with planning and strategic troubleshooting was needed.
The company also had concerns that there were not sufficient resources in place to deal with emergencies, as the prior IT support service relied on a couple of individuals, with little margin for absences, or unexpected problems.
Finance and IT Director at JCC Lighting, Steven Kinsella explains: "We required a more comprehensive service to ensure our IT systems are able to keep pace with our business. ramsac were introduced to us through a business partner and they demonstrated that they could provide the level of expertise,
proactive service and scalable support we required at the right price point. They also gelled instantly with our
own IT Manager who they would work with on projects and daily support issues."
JCC Lighting had also reached a point where it urgently needed to modernise its core systems, as Kinsella
elaborates on why it was the ideal time to involve ramsac in the business: "A number of our servers were due for replacement and we needed to think seriously about the future development of our IT systems and invest in the right solution."
ramsac commenced work with an IT Healthcheck of JCC Lighting's IT systems. This comprehensive assessment identified a number of network upgrades that were needed to keep it abreast of the company needs. "ramsac offered us excellent, plainspeaking expert advice on how to develop and manage our IT and helped us sensibly plan the best solution, within our budget," adds Kinsella. The first task was the server upgrade, with ramsac recommending the use of virtualisation (whereby one physical server is partitioned into multiple 'virtual' servers, giving each the appearance and capabilities of running on
its own dedicated hardware) for greater flexibility and economy. ramsac also took responsibility for installing
a new Dell storage area network (SAN), which like the server upgrade, gives greater flexibility with regards
to scalability of size and use, and disaster recovery, with a minimum of disruption to users.
Technical Director for ramsac, Paul Mew explains the cost benefits virtualisation brings to JCC Lighting: "We
advised that it would cost the company no more than the expected replacement cost for the old servers to
move to two higher capacity machines and use Microsoft's Hyper-V Virtualisation solution, to intelligently share this combined resource for all the network needs. As well as cutting the running costs and saving on the physical space needed to host servers, JCC Lighting now has a failover facility whereby in the event
of a server failure all the data is transferred to, and fully hosted by, the other one and kept safe."
Running a virtualised server network has given JCC Lighting greater overall control of its IT resources and made it more 'future-proof' by giving the flexibility to upgrade or swap physical hardware or software without disrupting the whole company. It has also allowed automatic failsafes to be put in place within the network, so the essential IT services can continue to run, even before the in-house team or ramsac can diagnose
and fix any faults that occur. Kinsella adds: “These upgrades have given us a solid and reliable foundation
upon which to grow our IT systems as and when they are needed."
As well as the system upgrades, one of the other valuable benefits for using ramsac as the outsourced IT
supplier has been the expert advice and IT mentoring it offers to JCC Lighting's in-house IT team. "Working with a focussed IT expert means we have access to the latest developments and opportunities within the IT industry, without the huge costs of training and time needed to acquire them ourselves," says Kinsella.
"As well as the reassurance of remote support, we have a visit from ramsac each month that means we have the benefits of an impressive hub of expertise from an excellent team, at a sensible cost." concludes Kinsella. "ramsac's support and the improved network and failsafes they have installed, gives us peace of mind that if our in-house IT Manager is ill, or on annual leave, we have the full IT back-up we need should there be any issues or threats to our essential IT systems."