Healix

Ensure that Healix can access critical information at all times

Like most businesses today, Healix depends heavily on its IT systems to support its operations, which run around the clock. Its contact centers operate a 'follow the sun' model so Healix would be able to temporarily transfer operations between offices to fulfil its obligations in the event of a short-term outage. However, Healix recognized that a protracted outage would cause it serious difficulties and put lives at risk so wanted to put reliable external support in place.

In a medical emergency seconds count so any delay in authorizing urgent medical care could literally make the difference between life and death. And if a client's employees or representatives are trapped in a dangerous situation overseas, knowing the precise location of evacuees and having the ability to communicate with them are critical to a successful extraction operation.

From a commercial point of view, downtime could result in financial losses for breach of clients' service level agreements, serious reputational damage to Healix and potentially lead to serious illness, disability or even a fatality.

Consequently, when it comes to disaster recovery planning Healix leaves nothing to chance, building in resilience to both its business processes and IT infrastructure. This includes workplace recovery provision that will give its employees a fully-equipped workplace should its own offices be out of action for more than a few days.

Workplace recovery services that protect people, systems and data

Healix chose Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) as its business continuity provider, reassured by our 40-year track record of protecting and recovering customers' systems and data. With several government departments among its customers, our Government Cloud platform was also a critical factor.

The Healix Group contracts over 120 seats at one of Sungard AS' UK workplace recovery sites – enough to cover more than a quarter of its workforce - which will enable employees to continue working productively in the event its own offices or IT systems are out of action.

CIO Graham Christie explains, "Our clients are governments, insurance companies and large corporates who all perform stringent due diligence covering our business processes, security and availability. So our business continuity planning has to be more than a piece of paper. We need to show it actually works."

To this end, Healix performs internal tests of its business continuity plans quarterly and conducts full-blown exercises involving operational personnel from all three arms of the group at the Sungard AS recovery facility annually.

With several sites in both central and outer London and an international network of workplace recovery centers, Sungard AS can offer customers a 'rollback' capability to a second or even third choice recovery center in the event of a large-scale incident.