CASE HISTORIES

Cambridge Online helps the world’s oldest printing and publishing house succeed in the 21st Century.

Cambridge University Press ensures resilience and availability of key business system with major enhancement to I.T. infrastructure.

Cambridge University Press is the printing and publishing house of the University of Cambridge. It is an integral part of the University and has similar charitable objectives in advancing knowledge, education, learning, and research.

The Press is the oldest printing and publishing house in the world, and has been operating as a printer and publisher since the first Press book was printed in 1584. Since then, books under Cambridge University's imprint have appeared in each and every year, and The Press has grown to become one of the largest academic and educational publishers in the world, publishing over 2,000 books and 150 journals a year.

Headquartered in Cambridge UK, The Press has global reach with its 17 subsidiary offices around the world that rely on services from this main office and distribution point. The IT team at The Press, realised that the systems responsible for the sales and order processing, and for running the warehouse, were critical to the success of business. Enhanced redundancy and resilience was needed for the systems to ensure that the business was not harmed by the failure, for whatever reason, of a key component. That is when they turned to Cambridge Online.

Cambridge Online Consulting
The existing production systems at The Press were HP (Hewlett-Packard) servers running OpenVMS and the Vista software application. For the last 5 years, Cambridge Online had also installed and enhanced a fibre-linked HP StorageWorks SAN (Storage Area Network) to ensure all the systems had access to quick and reliable data, whether they were HP or Sun computers.

The initial risk assessment for the configuration looked at what would be the consequence to availability from a variety of incidents, from component failure through to destruction of the machine room - a low probability, but a sensible precaution given that the building is on the flight path for the local airport.

Chris Milne the I.T. Director at the Cambridge University Press takes up the story. “We chose to work with Cambridge Online not least because of the competent and professional approach taken in servicing our existing system. Their expertise and enthusiasm gave us the confidence to proceed after the initial consultation period. The process of determining the right solution began with a simple diagram of what we were trying to achieve, and with the support of Cambridge Online this was developed into the design which enhanced the redundancy and resilience of our HP systems.”

Replication for peace of mind
The bespoke solution for The Press, made the most of the large site that they occupy by setting up a second machine room at the opposite end to the existing building. The systems in this new room mirrored those in the original room, and are on stand by in case of disaster. Load balancing between all systems is used to get the most from this new computing power without leaving it idle.

In considering the impact following a service failure, servers are only one part of the IT infrastructure. Other key components have had redundancy planned in. There is now alternative network, data storage and power supply routes in case of failure.

Cambridge Online has been instrumental in the successful implementation of this project, by first building the new HP AlphaServers at their specialist facility, delivering and installing the systems at The Press, cabling and networking them to the existing systems, and finally commissioning them.

“ With this project The Press has dramatically improved the continuity of service following a service failure.” explained Derek Allinson, Account Manager from Cambridge Online, “The service we have given to the customer, and the speedy reaction to issues, ensured that we had a major role from beginning to end.”

The future
The work on existing and new systems by The Press and Cambridge Online has brought all systems up to the latest specification, and led to the implementation of best practice by the operations team. The next step will be to ensure that the benefits of these investments in equipment and expertise are realised in all the global subsidiaries.

For the main work of The Press, the future will see more growth and diversity as it publishes in new formats and media, and continuously invests in technological change to support ‘e-publishing’ and improve its production, distribution and information systems. But the whole of this great expansion remains essentially an organic development, purposefully and directly related to The Press's statutory aims, and realised through a unitary, international printing and publishing organisation, with its physical and its constitutional centre in Cambridge. Cambridge Online continues its relationship with The Press to help make this vision a reality.

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