Who are Oxford Products?
Oxford Products is a global leader in the manufacturing and distribution of motorcycle and bicycle accessories, distributing to over 90 countries around the world. They have been family owned and run since their founding in 1973, and all of their products are designed in-house at their Design Research and Development Centre (DRDC).
We met with Justin Thomas, Oxford Products' Purchasing Director, to catch up on their long-term partnership with Intercity, and how we helped them get back on track after a major system outage with their incumbent provider.
The Challenge
Oxford Products' main distribution centre in Witney, Oxfordshire spans over 150,000 square feet. Their DRDC is half a mile away and has a lot of connected systems, networks, and information to access and keep secure. Around 18 months ago there was a major system outage, and their old back-up system with their incumbent provider was unable to run the virtual machines (VM) as it was supposed to. They had to copy the VM’s over to an old cluster which was time-consuming, inefficient, and meant they were running on old, inefficient servers. They had no back-up systems for a couple of days, which caused major disruption.
The Solution
Intercity are a longstanding mobile service provider for Oxford Products, going on a decade. Following the outage, Oxford Products worked with Intercity on their wider IT offerings to have a new physical back-up server put on site. This means their VM's are now backed up physically as well as in the cloud, so they are able to switchover to them without outages, better suiting their disaster recovery needs.
Additionally, it was important to Oxford Products that they were able to house their data in-house so that they didn't have to download from the Cloud constantly, but Intercity do have their servers backed-up into the Cloud as well to cover all bases.
The Business Benefits
Intercity deal with a wide range of products and manufacturers, so can offer Oxford Products competitive and adaptable solutions, and negotiate on their behalf with partners and vendors. This, combined with their long-standing relationship with Intercity and David, means they can be open and honest about their requirements and budgets knowing Intercity will offer the best possible solution.
In comparison to their previous IT partner for back-up, cyber security, and office 365, Intercity are far more proactive. Oxford Products are now confident that inevitable IT issues that occur going forward will be dealt with efficiently and supportively by Intercity, giving them the confidence to expand their business with Intercity in the future.
This is highlighted by Justin, who said:
“Everything we've done with Intercity so far, going right back to the mobile solution when we were first introduced to you, through to the virus protection, the back-up solution, [has given us] a lot of confidence in the solutions that Intercity offer and we fully intend to increase those in the future."
Intercity is the ideal technology partner to enable organisations like yours to flourish securely in the new age of working from anywhere. We enable businesses and people to be productive anywhere, anytime, regardless of device, communications or technology. Connecting and securing from device to the cloud. To learn how you can Do More with Intercity, please speak to us here or use the live chat. To learn more about Oxford Products, and some of the fantastic work they’re doing, please click here.
