Virtual CIO makes Rare appearance with new outsourcing deal

Virtual CIO makes Rare appearance with new outsourcing deal

Boutique women’s fashion brand Rare has dispensed with its IT team by outsourcing all of its IT operations to the 848 Group.

The company, which has moved entirely to cloud storage, chose to work with 848 after realising that traditional server solutions no longer met the needs of its growing fashion wholesale, retail concession and e-commerce business.

Rare has now entirely outsourced its IT to the 848, which specialises in the supply and support of cloud computing services. It said a team of eight work on the account, operating much like an internal IT team. But the cloud services delegate the responsibility of maintaining IT systems and upgrading servers for Rare.

IT scales to support business

John Quinn, Rare chief executive, who took the decision to outsource the entire IT estate, estimates the company has saved around £60,000 per annum on the costs of employing a full-time IT manger alone, as well as eliminating associated ongoing maintenance and budgetary pressures of managing IT in-house.

The increasing processes of the growing retail company were putting too much pressure on the company’s legacy Microsoft Windows Small Business Servers, and crashes had become a daily occurrence, leading Rare to scan the market for an upgrade to its ageing IT infrastructure.

“We didn’t just want a tech supplier to tell us the limitations of the technology they could supply and what we could do with it,” said Quinn. “We wanted a team that was forward thinking, and the 848 team are experts in what they do, with a down-to-earth approach and leave us to concentrate on what do best. 848 is now Rare’s IT department with our account manager acting as our virtual CIO.”