With financial services suffering the second highest level of downtime[1] of any sector, guarantor loan company Amigo Loans  chooses London colocation data centre City Lifeline to back up mission critical data and boost resilience.

Amigo Loans is the UK’s largest guarantor loans company, and offers an alternative way of borrowing money for people who can’t access credit through the banks using friends and family as guarantors.

The Bournemouth-based company has signed a two year contract with City Lifeline to fully secure its disaster recovery backup and an additional internet breakout, which improves its resilience if the site’s main connection is disrupted.

Amigo Loans had been using an in-house setup for mission critical operations, including its disaster recovery backups, but as it has continued to expand, decided to ensure full resilience by a long-term contract with the City Lifeline London data centre.

Mark Burgess, IT Director at Amigo Loans, explains: “Until now we've run our infrastructure ourselves from one of our offices.  As we’re not a data centre, things like power, cooling and network connectivity were a challenge for us. We decided it was time for us to focus on what we do best, and leave the data centre element to the specialists.

“We’re used to doing things ourselves, so the flexibility offered by City Lifeline was a big draw for us. We’re able to deal with them directly and feel like a valuable customer rather than just another number, and we also have plenty of options available with them as our needs change.”

Roger Keenan, managing director at City Lifeline, comments: “The last thing a rapidly growing company like Amigo Loans wants to concern itself with is worrying about its network connection and data backup. We’re pleased to take charge of their mission-critical data needs and enable them to concentrate on the continued success of their business.”

[1] 2013 Financial Services IT Availability and  Business Continuity Benchmark Survey http://www.continuitysoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Service-Availability-Survey-financial-services-2013.pdf