BCC IT ensures Princes Gate’s rural location is not a barrier to success

Operating a business in a rural location no longer means having to accept second best in terms of the IT you can make use of. Whilst the technology is readily available, finding the right partner who can deliver high level of skills and expertise can sometimes be difficult.  But, without such a service an organisation cannot really expect to get the necessary ROI from IT that it needs to succeed, leaving it lagging behind its more urban-based competition.

Princes Gate is a manufacturer of bottled water and water coolers. The water is sourced from the Princes Gate Spring which is fed by rainfall from the Pembrokeshire Hills. The company was founded by two brothers, David and Glyn Jones, over 23 years ago.

In 2006, they purpose-built an impressive bottling hall on the site of their farm and are continually investing in new machinery to improve the business. Today, Princes Gate employs over 50 people local to the Pembrokeshire region and their family is growing all the time. Princes Gate has become the chosen water for some pretty impressive places and can be found in some of the most prestigious outlets all over the UK.

The farm itself is still a fully-operational organic dairy farm, with bio-diversification gaining the Jones family several accreditations as they manage the land for the betterment of the wildlife and the plant species of the area.

Need for local IT support

Operating in a remote part of Pembrokeshire, finding an IT partner who could support their growing needs was important, as Endaf Edwards, from Princes Gate, explained. “We had worked for a number of years with an IT partner based in Cardiff, but were beginning to experience the downside of being some distance away. We had a requirement for a new server and so we took the opportunity to look round for an alternative partner that could offer us both high quality remote and onsite support, and eventually chose BCC IT.

“As well as their undoubted skills, experience and expertise, we particularly liked the family-friendly feel to their set up which is important when you consider our location in Wales.”

With the majority of users based at their main site and other users working remotely, the company has diverse IT requirements that BCC have been able to help them with over the years. This has ranged from sorting offsite backups to wireless solutions.

Regular and reliable offsite backup service

“As the business grew we knew we had to do something about backing up data,” said Endaf. “Previously we had done nothing, a common situation for start-up companies, and so we spoke to BCC to find out the best way for us to solve this problem.

“After looking at our requirements, BCC recommended the implementation of a regular offsite backup service. This automatically backs up our business-critical data to their secure datacentre in Bristol several times a week. This data can be quickly restored were we ever to experience a critical failure locally, and ensures the business will not suffer severe downtime.”

This backup involves more than 50GB of data from 2 sites and has built in integrity checks to ensure that the information being backed up is always available for instant restoration should the need arise.

Wireless technology

Wireless technology is now an important part of business IT infrastructure and BCC have been able to help Princes Gate here too, as Endaf explained. “Due to the geographic nature of our business, we have many wireless solutions in use. This ranges from WiFi to WiDi devices all of which BCC have helped us with, even before some of the technology (as in the case of WiDi) was fully understood by the wider business environment.”

Underpinning all the projects that BCC have worked on for Princes Gate has been the provision of their full onsite and remote support service – their Outsourced IT department.  With this BCC give Princes Gate a full remote service for all their IT requirements coupled with onsite visits where required.

Friendly and enthusiastic team

“They have installed all of our IT equipment over the last few years and oversee everything we do from normal PC email usage to factory and user support,” said Endaf.” We also have a number of users who work off-site whose requirements are different. But, this is not a problem as BCC are able to handle their needs in the main remotely.

“If this is not possible then they always have engineers who can attend site. We did have a similar level of support with our previous IT partner but we feel that BCC offer a more rounded approach to our needs.”


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“They are a friendly team who are enthusiastic in sorting out our problems and can always be called upon even if it is not their area of expertise. A good example of this is where they have helped us on machinery issues in our factory. They are a good outfit to work with and deserve the plaudits they are getting for the quality of the work they do.”

Endaf Edwards

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