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Kiln Ltd Meets Data Demands and Builds for Future Growth with Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage

July 2008 by Marc Jacob

With strong business growth in the UK supplemented with acquisitions abroad, Kiln Ltd needed a reliable, scalable storage platform to cope with its ever increasing data demands. A Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 1000 in its central data centre and a Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 500 in its remote site enabled Kiln to support its existing data resources and prepare for continued growth.

Kiln is an international insurance and reinsurance underwriting group with a portfolio of specialist risks. Since 1962, it has built its business on the strength of its underwriting. As a result, it is a recognised leader in each of the five main business areas in which it operates: reinsurance, accident and health, aviation, marine and special risks, and property. Kiln Ltd, the holding company of the Kiln Group, is based in Bermuda and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Its UK operating company, R J Kiln & Co Limited, has four syndicates at Lloyd’s and, in terms of capacity, is the fourth largest agency trading in the Lloyd’s insurance market. In addition to Bermuda and London, Kiln has offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa and Belgium.

Global Reach, Local Backup

The last few years have been very successful for Kiln. In addition to strong growth in the UK, the company has expanded its global operations through an aggressive acquisition strategy. However, with business success have come IT challenges, and its storage infrastructure has been put under increasing pressure. Kiln’s numerous acquisitions have led to an influx of new applications, new data and new employees, all of which have had to be integrated with the existing infrastructure. At the same time, the company has launched new services to the market, and an in-house team has developed and deployed new core underwriting applications. The need to comply with current and future regulations for data retention and retrieval, as well as ongoing improvement to the company’s business continuity plans, have also impacted on Kiln’s storage challenge. The cumulative effect of these new products, applications, compliance requirements and disaster recovery systems saw Kiln’s data volumes more than doubling year on year, a trend expected to continue, if not accelerate, for the foreseeable future. International operation and 24/7 business models means that for Kiln, as for many of its competitors, the availability of data is critical. As data is not available while it is being backed up, backup must take place in smaller and smaller time frames.

Kiln Systems Analyst, Ian Cowe says, “Every night we need to back up critical data and we were struggling to do it adequately. On the one hand, the increasing data volumes were requiring longer backup run times. And on the other, we needed to reduce the backup window. We needed a new storage system that would increase the speed and reliability of our backup capability so that this could be completed in time, without impacting on business critical activities the following day.”

Because of the importance of backup and recovery, Kiln must monitor these backup processes and needed a reporting solution that would enable its IT team to keep track of this activity. As part of its strategic aim to widen global operations while enhancing its data storage resources, Kiln required a high-performance storage solution that could back up the company’s regional data storage systems to its central data centres in the UK. “Our strategy has always been to centralise our storage operation, so we needed an infrastructure that would enable us to do this in the future,” Cowe says.

Kiln knew it needed to plan for future storage requirements. It required a solution that was scalable, offered high performance and was flexible enough to enable the company to add new technology to the framework as and when required.

Best Fit Solution

Kiln consulted its long-term partner, technologygroup, an agnostic data management consultancy, to evaluate its current and future storage requirements. After extensive analysis and evaluation of the options from a range of vendors, technologygroup recommended Hitachi Data Systems as it offered far superior scalability, reliability and performance.

“We ran a lab demo of the Hitachi Data Systems solution and the portfolio worked well with the business continuity processes Kiln had in place,” says technologygroup’s Business Development Manager for Kiln, Lloyd Joseph.

A Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 1000 was installed at Kiln’s Fenchurch Street, London, office to effectively handle the company’s day-to-day storage needs and to provide underwriters with uninterrupted, fast and secure access to business critical applications. It is used for the majority of the company’s backup requirements, including the Microsoft® Exchange back end, the file server and various Microsoft SQL databases, a VMware ESX server and a Microsoft Office SharePoint server. Meanwhile, an Adaptable Modular Storage 500 at Kiln’s Docklands data centre supports an important application developed in house by Kiln and its partners, a peer-to-peer trading platform designed to facilitate transactions between insurance brokers and underwriters in the Lloyds market.

Joseph believes the Hitachi Data Systems solution is the best fit for Kiln’s business needs and anticipated growth. The modular and scalable Adaptable Modular Storage 1000 makes it easy for Kiln to cost-effectively add more capacity for its data storage as the business continues to expand.

Future Plans

The Adaptable Modular Storage 1000 in Kiln’s central office has provided a solid foundation for the growth of Kiln’s business. In the future, Kiln plans to use this platform to provide backup hosting for other sites in the UK, and abroad where possible, enabling centralised data storage and ensuring that the company’s disaster recovery plans are developed in line with Kiln’s expansion.

“The ability of the Adaptable Modular Storage products to provide a platform for replicating our global data back to the UK means that we will not require an expensive upgrade for the next phase of our plan,” says Cowe.

Additionally the system offers advanced features that Kiln hopes to take advantage of in the future. For example, it enables technicians to take snapshots of the storage infrastructure, which gives a total picture of the storage environment to make restoration of data in an emergency faster and smoother.

The Adaptable Modular Storage 500 is also key to supporting the next "tranche" or portion of Kiln’s data storage strategy. Kiln is planning to open another data centre next year, and replication between the Adaptable Modular Storage 500 and the new site will be set up.

Cowe says, “We’re very excited about the potential the Hitachi Data Systems solution offers us. Its scalability and reliability mean Kiln can aggressively pursue its strategic plans for growth without worrying about storage constraints.”


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