EPIC invests in quoted equities, specialist funds, private equity, bonds and structured income products. The Group also started with contracts to manage assets for other founder shareholders and by the end of November 2004 had attracted sufficient further funds to move the total funds under management to over £2 billion.

The Challenge

Having previously resided in a rented office that provided communications and IT as part of the office solution, EPIC Investment Partners expanded into their current offices in 2005. With this move, came the difficult decision on whether to build their own data centre and recruit an IT team to run it, or to outsource completely. Darren Sadek, Chief Operating Officer at EPIC had the responsibility to investigate the options available for the company. Key criteria in his decision were, of course, costs but also the flexibility of providing applications to remote users; the ability to add new users without interruption; having a robust business continuity solution and access to an efficient helpdesk.

Whichever route Mr Sadek decided upon, the added challenge was that EPIC Investment Partner’s existing data resided on their landlord’s IT infrastructure and this needed to be successfully migrated without any data loss or corruption. Users were also used to having an IT infrastructure and helpdesk that was on site. If EPIC moved to an outsourced service, they faced scepticism from users’, with views that they would not have the same benefits if the IT provision was not internally owned and managed.

Finally, the new solution had to be delivered within an incredibly tight timescale of 3 weeks, due to the office move being forced upon them at extremely short notice.

The Solution

After struggling to justify the investment required to purchase the hardware, software and services required for a solution to serve 50 employees, and also taking into account the cost of building a suitable server room, Mr Sadek was recommended to Intercept by BIS Limited, who provide EPIC Investment Partners with their communications solutions.

After meeting with the team at Intercept, Mr Sadek determined that OnlineDesktop, a subscription based, outsourced solution, would not only be able to meet his tight timescales, but would also provide a “future proofed” solution as the company grew. Mr Sadek recognised that a key benefit of the hosted solution was its strict Service Level Agreement (SLA), which penalised Intercept for any sustained down time. “OnlineDesktop provides EPIC Investment Partners with a high performance, secure, IT provision. To date, there has been literally no loss of service and I know that I made the right decision for my company 8 months ago when we embraced the OnlineDesktop solution.”

In order to deal with EPIC employees concerns about not having onsite helpdesk support, Intercept quelled any fears with a demonstration of the power of its remote support tools. By “shadowing” users the helpdesk can take control of the users desktop and OnlineDesktop session and guide them through their problems, without having to physically visit the desktop.

Whilst Mr Sadek comments that users very rarely have to call the helpdesk, when they do, shadowing provides a quick resolution to the issue. In addition, the technology has also been used to great effect as a training tool, to very quickly familiarise users with the functionality of new applications subscribed to.

EPIC Investment Partners’ employees now have secure access to all of their applications and data, when and wherever they need them. Currently, users access not only standard applications such as Microsoft Office and Email (including mobile email via BlackBerry), but also contact management applications and productivity industry specific applications such as Bloomberg, BITON, ProQuote and TAS Books.

Mr Sadek concluded, “EPIC has seen major productivity benefits from the use of Intercept’s OnlineDesktop solution. Our organisation is growing fast and we are able to focus 100% on the development of our business, without the distractions of IT issues.”

EPIC case study (54K)

Website: www.epicip.com