Dear Customer,
In light of the current world-wide COVID-19 pandemic, we are making the following announcements to all our customers, regarding business continuity assurance over the period we are all affected.
1) SystemCore will be carrying on service as usual, so long as is physically and technically possible, and currently foresee no circumstances where this will change.
2) Key staff already work remotely over the web, and are currently in effective isolation as a precautionary measure. All outside visits and meetings have been switched to meetings over the web/telephone.
3) We are contactable 24/7/365 by landline telephone, mobile telephone (2 separate numbers), email, skype, whatsapp, twitter – as usual. Contact details are at foot of this message.
4) We already operate secondary fail-over systems for both telephone and internet access so that key staff should always be able to access customer systems in order to fix any issues that might arise.
5) Our customer website servers, email servers and internet backbone connections, are provided by GURU Cloudhosting (Part of UK Dedicated), and to a lesser extent by Fasthosts UK. Both of these providers are substantial UK based organisations and both have already made specific provision for business service continuity during the pandemic. Their respective statements on the issue can be found here:
https://help.fasthosts.co.uk/app/answers/detail/a_id/3354/
https://www.guru.co.uk/news/2020/guru-update-regarding-coronavirus
Both providers already operate fault-tolerant, fail-over systems, providing zero-downtime, as well as off-site backups, and key-staff cover. At-home-working over the web, including support call routing and escalation procedures, have already been implemented in both cases, in order to further reduce any risks.
We expect further detailed announcements and plans from these providers as things progress, and will keep you updated with any important changes.
6) Whilst all our clients are very important to us, and will all continue to be supported as normal, in the event of any significant worsening of the situation beyond our control, we would be prioritising any work required for our NHS customers, and in particular, those operating in the UK Primary Health Care sector. We hope you understand the importance of keeping NHS health related systems operating above all else, should needs ever demand it.
7) All our web-servers and email servers are all extremely well resourced, and should not suffer any degradation of service during this crisis. However, please be aware that as more and more individuals and companies will be working remotely from home, some broadband internet connections, as provided by your internet provider (ISPs – eg: BT, Virgin, et al), will be under increased load, and that this might conceivably effect your internet connection speeds. SystemCore do not generally provide internet/telecoms connections to premises, so you should contact your ISP directly should you encounter any such issues. The one possible exception to this is where customer websites themselves might be experiencing excessive demand, and indeed we have already noticed NHS websites registering significantly increased bandwidth demands. We are constantly monitoring this situation, and in the case of NHS websites we will immediately increase allocated bandwidth resource, wherever necessary, and at no extra cost, in order that availability is uninterrupted and maximum responsiveness continues.
If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to contact us. In the meantime, it is business as usual for SystemCore.
Very best regards
Rob Cain and Al Cain
Directors – SystemCore Ltd
General queries: frontdesk@systemcore.co.uk
Support queries: support@systemcore.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 1403 738844
Mobiles: 07889 439743 / 07771 863893
