SolutionsPT has appointed Tony Mannion to the position of Business Unit Leader for its Industrial IT services. His first act in the new role is to oversee the re-launch and roll out of the company’s Managed Platform offering.
Unique to the market, Managed Platform is the industry’s first fully managed IT platform built specifically for manufacturing and industrial environments, due to its ability to go two layers deeper in its network analysis than any other available system. Offering a complete IT system infrastructure combined with SCADA Performance Management and Disaster Resilience, Managed Platform enables manufacturers to combine performance monitoring, proactive alerting and disaster resilience to help reduce downtime, lower capital and operating costs and increase competitiveness.
Managed Platform is delivered and monitored by SolutionsPT’s expert team, who monitor and manage both the performance management and the disaster resilience. Key features of the system include the provision of a complete back-up and recovery solution for control infrastructures, which includes bare metal recovery, instant visualisation for rapid recovery and complete server recovery to any physical or virtual environment. The platform takes performance monitoring to the next level as SolutionsPT’s experienced team conduct deep network monitoring down to SCADA and application level and immediately alert production sites to any potential issues before a failure can occur.
SolutionsPT has identified that manufacturing organisations often inherit IT infrastructures specified at corporate level which are not robust enough for the plant environment. A recent survey from the company revealed that 40% of manufacturing businesses were less than confident in their organisation’s ability to get up and running again after a critical IT failure.
Tony Mannion, who was previously Sales Manager before assuming his new position, said: “Manufacturers are focused on developing, marketing and selling their products, so disaster recovery is often something that slips down the list of priorities until something goes wrong. We’ve heard directly from engineering, operations and IT departments that there is a clear requirement for a reliable, secure and cost-effective IT solution to replace their existing systems. Managed Platform provides a solution to these business risks and IT challenges at an affordable cost, allowing companies to focus their time, resources and energy on developing and marketing their products.”
Early-adopter Dairy Crest, along with a number of other leading food and drink manufacturers, has already signed up to the Managed Platform service.
Rasik Patel, Controls Engineer at Dairy Crest, said: “SolutionsPT’s Managed Services Platform has given us access to an extended IT department that we can call upon whenever we need to. Although we have a corporate IT function, we felt we would benefit from increased localised support. As a food manufacturer, downtime and disruption is something we must work hard to avoid to remain profitable, but without SolutionsPT’s support we did not have time for preventive and predictive maintenance and monitoring.
“SolutionsPT monitors the functionality and criticality of our systems, identifying and resolving potential issues before they can have an impact on our operations. The team acts as an extension of our IT team and using SolutionsPT’s service has allowed us to take advantage of the economy of scale and the team’s specialist expertise, delivering enhanced infrastructure security and improved disaster resilience.”
For more information on the Managed Platform offering, click here >
