Willerby is the UK’s longest-established and largest manufacturer of holiday homes and lodges. Founded 80 years ago, the business has grown from its post-war beginnings into a market leader with a strong reputation for quality, design, and innovation. Willerby operates from a large manufacturing site in Hull, employs more than 700 people, and produces thousands of homes each year for holiday parks and leisure customers nationwide. Sustainability and craftsmanship are central to its operations, reflecting a long-standing commitment to build durable and desirable living spaces for customers across the UK.

As a manufacturing organisation, Willerby depends on reliable, always-on I.T. systems to support production, design, finance, supply chain operations, and overall business continuity.

The Challenge

Prior to working with Synapse, Willerby had no formal disaster recovery capability in place. All critical data and workloads were held on-site, creating a single point of failure across the organisation.

This exposed the business to significant operational and financial risk. Any major incident. such as hardware failure, fire, flood, or cyber event. could have resulted in prolonged downtime, data loss, and disruption to manufacturing operations.

For a production-led business, even short outages carried the risk of halted output, delayed orders, and reputational damage.

The Trigger

Willerby’s small internal I.T. team recognised the growing gap between business risk and existing infrastructure capability. As system reliance increased, it became clear that an enterprise-grade disaster recovery platform was required. One that could be implemented and managed without adding further strain to internal resources.

The requirement was clear:

·         Introduce a resilient, off-site disaster recovery solution

·         Protect business-critical data

·         Reduce reliance on on-premises-only infrastructure

·         Achieve this within a commercially realistic budget

The Solution

Synapse designed and delivered a fully managed disaster recovery and data protection platform, aligned to Willerby’s operational requirements.

The solution included:

·         Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS)

·         Off-site backup and replication

·         Power Store storage

·         Enterprise-grade servers

·         PPBS for Google Mailbox protection

·         Secure connectivity

·         Data centre services

Primary production data and workloads are replicated from Willerby’s on-site environment to Synapse’s Isle of Man data centre, providing a secure, resilient off-site recovery capability.

This approach ensured Willerby could recover critical systems rapidly in the event of a major incident, without needing to manage complex infrastructure internally.

Why Synapse

Synapse was selected because of its ability to deliver a truly end-to-end managed service. Rather than piecing together multiple vendors, Willerby benefited from a single, cohesive platform covering infrastructure, connectivity, data protection, and ongoing management.

Competing providers were unable to meet the full scope of requirements in the same way, or within the available budget. Synapse’s approach aligned technically and commercially, providing confidence without compromise.

Delivery & Support

The solution was architected by Simon from the Synapse team and delivered entirely by Synapse engineers. The off-site disaster recovery environment was designed, deployed, and is now fully managed at Synapse’s data centres.

Synapse continues to provide ongoing management and support, removing operational burden from Willerby’s internal I.T. team and ensuring recovery readiness remains consistent over time.

The Outcome

Since implementation, Willerby has eliminated the risk associated with a single-site I.T. failure.

Key outcomes include:

·         Removal of critical business risk from on-site-only infrastructure

·         Confidence that data and workloads can be recovered following a major incident

·         Reduced exposure to unplanned downtime and financial loss

·         Enterprise-grade resilience delivered as a managed service

While the solution operates quietly in the background, it provides something far more valuable than technology alone: peace of mind.

In Summary

For Willerby, disaster recovery is no longer an unknown risk. It is a proven, managed capability.

By partnering with Synapse, Willerby has gained the confidence that its manufacturing operations, data, and systems are protected against the unexpected, allowing the business to focus on production, growth, and delivery without distraction.

Start where it matters most. Protect what keeps your business moving.

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