TMCnet News
Advanced 365 secures £2.5 million five-year managed services contract with Ruffer LLP(M2 PressWIRE Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Independent investment management firm, Ruffer LLP, has selected Advanced 365 (Advanced) to manage its entire IT infrastructure over the next five years in a contract worth 2.5 million. Advanced will manage 100 servers across Ruffer's offices in London, Edinburgh and Hong Kong and will provide a 24/7 managed IT services desk. The service will go live by the end of November 2012. Ruffer manages investments on a discretionary basis for private clients, trusts, charities and pension funds. At 28 September 2012, funds managed by the group exceeded 13.7bn. The investment firm has seen considerable growth over the last five years and took the opportunity to review the management of its IT infrastructure in order to ensure it is able to support its continued growth. Advanced won the business following an extensive tendering process involving five companies. David Francis, Chief Operating Officer from Ruffer LLP says, "We were particularly impressed with the Advanced team's expertise. Through the tender process they demonstrated a thorough understanding of the challenges faced by the financial services sector with a wider range of technical skills and resources than the other companies we researched." "By outsourcing support to Advanced, we are ensuring that our entire IT estate is in the safe hands of a specialist managed services provider with a proven track record of supporting financial services firms." Advanced 365's services will provide the necessary IT resilience, availability and support levels Ruffer requires, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Advanced desktop support engineers will be located at Ruffer's London-based headquarters supported by Advanced's centralised 24/7 service desk and operations team. Advanced will be managing Ruffer's primary and disaster recovery infrastructures, ensuring that business runs smoothly in the event of an emergency so that Ruffer clients continue to receive first-class service. Francis comments, "Advanced will create an environment of highly available IT services whereby our investment and operational teams have the business systems and technology available to them when needed. Delivering the highest quality service to our clients is of paramount importance and we are confident that Advanced will allow us to continue to meet this challenge and drive the business forward." Looking ahead, Ruffer is intending to use the full range of IT services and solutions available through Advanced 365. Advanced 365 provides services for numerous financial services firms including Cazenove Capital Management, Charles Stanley, Standard Bank, Mizuho and Killik & Co. -ENDS- Notes to Editor About Ruffer LLP www.ruffer.co.uk Ruffer is a long-only absolute return manager; it invests with the objective of protecting and growing its clients' capital by generating consistent positive returns, without reference to any particular index or benchmark. Ruffer LLP is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. About Advanced 365 www.advancedcomputersoftware.com/365 Advanced 365 provides a full outsourcing solution for desktop to data centre service delivery, ITIL based service management, application development, unified communications and cloud enablement. Advanced 365 designs, deploys and operates applications using .NET, Microsoft SQL Server, the Microsoft Office System and Microsoft CRM. Service delivery can be provided from either Advanced 365's own data centre facility or one of its managed suites (hosted and managed in shared facilities). Advanced 365 also provides Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) utilising its own cloud platform. Quality and security is assured through the company's ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 accreditations. Core offerings include: o IT Managed services focusing on the core utility components of clients' IT operations (including monitoring, backup, email and hosting right up to full IT infrastructure outsourcing). o Unified Communication solutions that consolidate telephony, presence, mobile and contact centre systems and are designed to bring data, voice and video together. Technologies include Microsoft Lync. o Line of business applications designed to improve the flow of information around an organisation. Applications include Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Business Intelligence. o Application development to deliver a fully-supported application managed service for both existing legacy applications and new applications developed by Advanced 365. Contacts: Liz Ebbrell and Angela Mycock, Advanced Computer Software Group [email protected] +44(0)1625 856 505 ((M2 Communications disclaims all liability for information provided within M2 PressWIRE. Data supplied by named party/parties. Further information on M2 PressWIRE can be obtained at http://www.presswire.net on the world wide web. Inquiries to [email protected])). (c) 2012 M2 COMMUNICATIONS |