NRMA Motoring & Services appoints Macquarie Telecom to Host Roadside Assistance

Disaster recovery solution to provide 100% uptime for Business critical applications

Sydney, Australia – May, 2006 – NRMA Motoring & Services has appointed Macquarie Telecom to provide disaster recovery services for its roadside assistance program, to ensure that NRMA members are not left stranded in the event of a system failure at NRMA.

Under the deal, worth $250,000 per annum, Macquarie Telecom's world-class Intellicentre is the hosting site for NRMA's disaster recovery IT infrastructure. Macquarie Telecom will also provide fixed and mobile telecommunications links during disaster recovery.

Macquarie Telecom's co-location service will connect with NRMA's production site in North Strathfield via a dedicated Ethernet data service, and to its Gosford call centre via a 2MB broadlink service.

The NRMA's roadside assistance program is critical to NRMA's performance in the motoring market. The program responds to more than 6,000 calls per day and has been helping NSW and ACT motorists for over 80 years.

NRMA uses a custom-built Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) program to field calls from customers with car troubles and jobs are dispatched out to the patrol vehicles' onboard computer via GPRS.

“Building a disaster recovery solution into our latest CAD upgrade is standard risk mitigation procedure,” said Craig Gibbons, Head of ICT, NRMA Motoring & Services.

“If our CAD system went down, NRMA customers could be left waiting for quite a long time, which is inconsistent with NRMA's reputation for delivering high quality services”.

Mr Gibbons said NRMA had selected Macquarie Telecom as its provider following a rigorous tender process.

“Macquarie Telecom showed that they understand NRMA's specific needs and that it takes responsibility for a smooth transition and speedy problem resolution,” Mr Gibbons said.

“The Intellicentre's infrastructure has an impressive level of resilience and security built into the facility. This, combined with the certifications and accreditations Macquarie Telecom has gained, mean we are secure in knowing that it has the processes necessary to meet all corporate governance standards.”

The disaster recovery site will be a mirror image of the NRMA environment, running two Dell 2850, clustered Oracle databases on an EMC CX300 SAN. GPRS communications links will also be established between the NRMA production site, its Gosford call centre and Macquarie Telecom so that, in the event of a disaster at one of the NRMA sites, the entire fleet of patrol vehicles remain connected to the CAD system.

NRMA is operating a manual disaster recovery system. At the flick of a switch, NRMA will be able to redirect services from its production site LAN to it Disaster Recovery site at Macquarie Telecom.

“We see a growing number of businesses with mission critical IT systems electing components of their IT so they can access advanced technology, people and processes while controlling costs. Co-location is a highly secure alternative, plus with Macquarie Telecom, customers can choose from a range of carriers for voice and data links,” said Greg Thomson, Executive Managing Director, Data and Security, Macquarie Telecom.

“The key to success is choosing a provider that has been independently certified, offers accountable SLA's and detailed reporting so the customer can track the performance of networks, hardware, software and services,” he said.

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For more information:
Mandy Galmes
N2N Communications
02 9213 2302
agalmes@n2n.com.au

About Macquarie Telecom

Macquarie Telecom is a leading supplier of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions – including voice, data, mobile and hosting – specialising in the business and government markets. Its dedicated managed hosting and security facility, the Intellicentre, is certified to BS 7799 and DSD Gateway security standards.

Macquarie Telecom provides services to 3,000 business and government customers in Australia and Asia, supporting more than one million business users at work every day. Founded in July 1992, it is one of Australasia's first deregulated telecommunications companies. It expanded its operation into Asia in 2000, and holds carrier licenses in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong..