IPC Media
Background to the Project
IPC Media area leading UK consumer print and on-line magazine publisher with over 85 leading print brands and an on-line audience of around 20 million users every month. This on-line business has been growing rapidly and generates significant revenues. However, increasing numbers of system outages and poor response times were impacting their ability to deliver advertising commitments and was threatening important business relationships. As IPC’s Digital Director, Neil Robinson pointed out “we had hit the wall.”
Neil concluded that his operational team lacked the experience or technical knowledge to improve the situation. “As an on-line publisher we are very focused on developing the applications that are the foundation of our revenues” added Neil “there was not enough emphasis on systems administration and operations and we didn’t have the right people in the right place.”
The Challenge and Scope of the Project
Technical Growth were asked to prepare a report on the current situation and make recommendations on how to improve both the hardware architecture and the underlying IT processes. However, within days of starting their review critical performance issues saw the Technical Growth team rolling up their sleeves and getting involved in fixing problems as well as developing plans for the future.
One by one the problems were overcome and the team was able to complete and present their proposals and recommendations to the IPC Media Board. The plans were approved and with recent firsthand experience of their skills, expertise and dedication Technical Growth were asked to provide the design authority, programme and project management right through to final implementation.
The Technical and Business Benefits
For Neil Robinson this has resulted in a system that hardly ever has an outage. “We have availability and performance figures a bank would be proud of.” It also means he has a far better governance regime with an improved balance between the needs of the developers and system administration.
The business has seen volume growth of between 30% and 40% that could not have been achieved without the changes in the architecture and the systems management processes, and Neil is absolutely confident in the ability of the architecture to scale seamlessly in the future.
The way in which Technical Growth implemented better systems management processes and designed in significant elements of self service had an additional knock-on benefit for IPC Media. In looking to change hosting arrangements Neil had been considering procuring a full managed services solution. However it soon became apparent that their new systems management capabilities were better and more cost effective than those being provided by the service providers they were considering, thereby removing the need for the service and the extra cost that would have incurred.
Technical Growth’s Value
Neil was impressed not only by the level of technical knowledge displayed by Technical Growth but also by their pragmatism. “It was obvious these people had been there and done it before. They not only came up with a high quality technical solution, but were prepared to jump in and help in the early days when we had problems. Straight away they grasped the key dynamics and priorities of our business which enabled them to focus in on the most pressing problems and also to work very collaboratively with all our people” he said. Further, Neil pointed to the way that the business had grown without any IT constraints as an indicator of the success of the project. “We wouldn’t have been able to achieve that without the work carried out by Technical Growth.”
