Client Profile

Goodbody, part of the Fexco Group, is Ireland’s longest established stockbroking firm with roots dating back to 1877. As well as being one of the leading institutional brokers and corporate finance houses, they are one of the largest wealth management firms in Ireland.

Customer Background

In late 2013, Goodbody tendered for an outsourced Managed Service to replace the IT hosting and managed services that had been provided by their previous owner and move away from the shared service model.

For this decoupling, Goodbody awarded a 5 year Managed Services contract to Version 1 to manage the end to end service encompassing service desk, hosting services, data centre, proactive central infrastructure management and monitoring, core network, security and best practice governance model, in 24 x 7 environments with associated Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Version 1 Solution

Goodbody is a business that strives to deliver comprehensive market leading products and services in the Financial Services industry, and demands the highest quality of services for their clients.

To meet these objectives robust infrastructure is essential, including demand & capacity management, availability & continuity management, information security and regulatory & compliance management.

Given these demands a key element of the project was to deliver maximum service availability and uptime throughout the project.

The project was delivered in a number of phases (DESIGN>BUILD>MIGRATE>MANAGE) with the outputs of each phase being subject to a highly structured solution acceptance process which defined and separated roles and responsibilities across vendor and customer teams.

Real Business Benefits, Delivered

Version 1 delivered the following benefits for Goodbody:

  • Transformation – building out an entirely new next-generation technology stack
  • Reduced Risk – IT infrastructure and ISO20000 certified SLA driven managed service gives Goodbody the ability to respond to change in a timely fashion
  • Innovative approach to transition – stretching the networks between the legacy and new data centres allowing for a controlled low-risk migration of services on a gradual basis, avoiding the inherent risks of a big bang approach
  • IT Maintenance Optimisation – Data Centres delivers a simplified and coherent solution resulting in optimised infrastructure maintenance, support, and licensing costs.
  • Business Agility and Change – IT solution and managed service provider that will facilitate its growth and prosperity in the competitive market
  • Business Continuity and Service Excellence – the well-executed project meant a seamless to transition for business users and no service degradation to impact on the delivery of excellent customer service.
  • Future Proofed Solution Design