Business in Newbury - Perceptive Online just the ticket for Cutcost.com

When Harwell-based Cutcost.com launched its unique online e-procurement service in 2004, Directors Brian Moss and John Godley chose Newbury’s Perceptive Online to provide the extensive and specialised range of managed hosting services that would be fundamental to the success of the new venture.

“We went to Perceptive in part because we needed Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange and SQL Server,” said John Godley, IT Director at Cutcost. “They had the skill set we needed.”

Resilience and capacity were the areas that were most important to the success of the project, however. “Perceptive has built a genuinely business-grade environment,” explained John. “The backup, maintenance and upgrade regimes are well defined and rigorously executed. The network infrastructure is highly redundant, with duplication in all key areas.”

Complex implementation
Cutcost is much more than just another online catalogue. Brian Moss, Cutcost’s Managing Director, explained: “Cutcost splits users’ orders across a number of suppliers, ensuring that the best value is secured for each item in the order. And the scope of the service is probably unique: through Cutcost.com, businesses can manage some 95% of their procurement.”

As a result, implementing the service was complex and involved. “Perceptive were great,” commented John. “During the early months, when we were setting the service up, Perceptive’s technical expertise was invaluable. We certainly wouldn’t have been able to do what we’ve done without them.”

Building the business
Two years down the line, with Cutcost.com well established, the value of the work put in during those early days has been proved. “Because the entire back end to the Cutcost.com site is managed by Perceptive, along with our Hosted Exchange, we can concentrate on building our business,” he observed. “We don’t have to worry about patches, updates, backups or systems maintenance, because Perceptive handle it all for us.”

John summed up, “I would encourage any business looking for Hosted Exchange, or server farms in a genuinely business-grade network infrastructure – especially where Microsoft skills are important – to check Perceptive out.”

For more information on Perceptive Online’s services, please visit www.perceptive-online.com or contact press.office@perceptive-online.com (01635 234100).

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