First Canadian Title pioneered the concept of title insurance in Canada and has led the field ever since. In 2005 alone, it issued more than 782,000 title insurance policies and guaranteed services. Its clients include lawyers, notaries and financial institutions of all sizes, but ultimately, it serves the needs of purchasers of Canadian residential and commercial real estate.

The company prides itself on adding value and increasing the certainty and integrity of its customers’ real estate transactions. But in order to do that, it must be sure that its networks are up and running and available 24x7. First Canadian Title had been working with a provider to ensure its business continuity, but was not receiving the level of service and availability it needed to grow its network and maintain its competitive edge.

“We needed a national supplier,” says Dave Kereliuk, Senior Manager, Technical Services. “Our requirements included availability, uptime and the ability for our provider to meet our service levels. But more than that, we wanted to know that they would work with us and help us design a network that would allow us to move forward.” First Canadian Title invited bids from three potential suppliers. “Quite simply, TELUS did the best job to win the business,” says Kereliuk.

Full redundancy, real time replication
At its Internet Data Centre in Toronto, TELUS now hosts a full set of redundant servers for First Canadian Title. The company’s critical data is replicated to these servers in real-time, while less critical information is backed up nightly. Guaranteed uninterrupted power supply, full physical and virtual security and round-the-clock monitoring ensure the utmost in availability. If there’s a failure of any sort in any of the links in the company’s WAN, its employees in any region across the country can continue processing their information through the TELUS centre. “We operate so that we can turn around transactions in 24 hours,” explains Kereliuk. “If we weren’t able to do that, we could potentially lose a huge amount of business.”

First Canadian Title looks to TELUS for more than just business continuity. “They provide the vision and the technology to allow us to continue,” says Kereliuk. “We’re constantly looking for new technology and new ways to bring more services to our customers. That’s where TELUS has a strong hand. We’ve never come across a situation where they haven’t been able to help us implement the right technology into our solutions. In fact, it’s been going so well that we’ve just renewed this contract with them and awarded them the contract to move us over to an MPLS network.”