Case Study: Multimedia International Services achieves near-zero downtime and seamless failover with Vision Solutions Double-Take Availability

Multimedia International Services - Customer Case Study

Multimedia International Services (MIS) is a Blackpool‑based advertising company that runs the UK’s largest electronic point‑of‑purchase network, serving some 18,000 local businesses. Because service delivery is almost entirely IT‑driven, a 2004 SAN/software failure that knocked out the server and storage infrastructure for four working days exposed a critical continuity gap; a prior replication product proved difficult to manage and required identical hardware, so MIS needed a reliable, hardware‑agnostic failover solution.

Alchemy Systems introduced Vision Solutions’ Double‑Take Availability, which MIS trialed and rolled out in just 1.5 days. Double‑Take now replicates production data in real time to backup servers and performs automatic or on‑demand failovers for Exchange, databases, web, reporting, content management and Enterprise Blackberry Server. The implementation enabled routine maintenance during business hours, reduced target‑server hardware costs, and—through multiple subsequent incidents—kept systems available so that 80% of staff were unaware of failures and recovery actions complete in under 90 seconds for affected users.

Multimedia International Services