Casestudy

HBS Internet

HBS Internet was one of the first clients to move into iomart Hosting’s Leicester Data Centre.

HBS Internet started life as HBS Consultants back in 1995 as an authorised Mac dealer and service centre. Unlike many other internet businesses it not only survived the dot.com bubble burst but actually grew year-on-year to become the dynamic internet-facing business it is today.

HBS Internet now services 150 clients across the UK and Europe, ranging in size from multi-nationals and large organisations right down to the smallest of businesses, providing with a full portfolio of web design and hosting services. The company also provides technical consultancy services to its clients.

Steve Jones, Director at HBS Internet, says: “We bought into iomart Hosting’s Leicester Data Centre because we’re a company that looks ahead. We knew that virtualisation, the cloud and off-site back-up were important going forward for our customers, so going into Leicester was all about anticipating future growth. We initially bought one rack two years ago and we’ve been there ever since.”

The level of service guaranteed by iomart Hosting was hugely important for HBS Internet as it had been using a third party data centre in London but had been unhappy with its service levels for some time.

Steve Jones says: “We interviewed a number of data centre providers and chose iomart Hosting because it offered the highest service levels and the opportunity for commercially sustainable growth.”

The capacity to increase bandwidth and add more racks were also important reasons for the move to the Leicester DC.  

“Internet usage and client demands tend to double every hundred days,” Steve explains, “so it’s really important that we have the capacity for growth.”

HBS Internet was keen to be as green as possible and therefore wanted to virtualise. So instead of racking HBS’s 30 servers into their rack, iomart put in 10 HP Proliant G7 DL380 high capacity servers using VMware’s ESX technology which share their hardware in a cluster, to create a robust and efficient infrastructure.

Steve Jones explains: “Virtualisation means we can use a Mac server, a Linux server and a Windows server all on the same platform. It’s great for resiliency, performance and the recovery rate is excellent.”

“Having virtualised servers like HBS Internet does allows you to use your servers better without wasting capacity and to move data for your clients more efficiently.” 

And to cap it all the company plants a tree for every server it virtualises so a small forest is now growing thanks to HBS Internet.

“Our clients stay with us because they value the personal attention that they get from us,” Steve Jones says. “That’s one of the reasons that we stay with iomart Hosting because we get the same personalised service from them that we pride ourselves on giving our own customers.”

For more information about HBS Internet go to www.hbsinternet.co.uk