SBL safeguards business continuity with arcserve solutions
Customer Case Study | October 2013
SBL safeguards business continuity with arcserve solutions
Industry: IT
CLIENT PROFILE
Employees: 100 Revenue: £100 million
BUSINESS
CHALLENGE
SOLUTION
BENEFIT
As an authorised security
SBL needs to safeguard
Arcserve® High
The solution has helped
hardware and software
customer service levels
Availability and
SBL improve its business
reseller for major vendors,
by minimising the
arcserve® Replication
continuity strategy,
SBL provides information
potential impact of
protect five terabytes of
reducing the risk of
security technologies and
unplanned system
business critical data by
disruption, safeguarding
services to the UK’s public
downtime and data loss
continually replicating
customer services
sector organisations.
on its expanding business.
physical and virtual
and ensuring ongoing
servers to a virtualised
compliance with
offsite environment.
ISO 27001 standards.
Customer Success Story: SBL | October 2013
BUSINESS Protecting organisations from information security threats SBL has been offering comprehensive range of information security products and services for over 25 years. Located a few miles north of York, the company is an authorised security software and hardware reseller for major brands, including Dell, Sourcefire, Adobe and Microsoft. The training, consultancy and services provided by SBL’s 100-strong workforce include IT security design, installation and ongoing support. These services safeguard information security for its predominantly public sector customers, which include local and central government, healthcare, education, justice and defence organisations. Formerly known as Software Box Limited, the company is committed to helping its customers keep pace with security threats from ever-evolving technology. It is currently focused on strategic growth, which involves expanding the services side of the business.
CHALLENGE Preventing disruption to customer services Good customer communications and exceptional service are crucial to achieving SBL’s plans for growing the services side of its business. The company is acutely aware of the disruption that unplanned system downtime and data loss could cause. Jeremy Needley, Technical Manager at SBL, comments: “Business continuity is increasingly critical as our business grows and more customers rely on our services. Ensuring our staff can continue to work in the event of an IT incident has become a higher priority.” As an information security advisor to top government departments, SBL needs to maintain its accreditations with the latest industry standards. “We must ensure we meet the business continuity and disaster recovery standards specified in ISO 27001,” adds Needley.
Business continuity is increasingly critical as more customers rely on our services. Jeremy Needley | Technical Manager
Customer Success Story: SBL | October 2013
The company had a comprehensive tape backup and recovery solution in place, but recovering an entire server could take up to two days. Furthermore, there was a real risk of significant data losses. “Whenever we lost a server we had to completely rebuild it and then restore the data, which could take a couple of days,” explains Needley. “We also lost that day’s data – which could be a whole day’s worth of work – because backups were only run once a day, overnight.” Having experienced the impact of losing an email server in the past, SBL recognised the need for an offline copy of its critical servers. “An email server outage would have a massive impact and be very costly because most of our customer communications are through email,” Needley confirms. To avoid disruption from unplanned outages, the company needed to ensure business critical information and services could be brought back online within minutes rather than days and data losses minimised.
SOLUTION Reliable replication and recovery With business growth at stake, SBL embarked on a project aimed at improving its business continuity strategy during the summer of 2012. The company investigated two potential solutions, including an arcserve technologies solution comprising arcserve® Replication and arcserve® High Availability. “We researched solutions from two different vendors and found that although they had very similar functionality, the arcserve solution was easier to set up,” says Needley. Needley and his team completed the rollout of the arcserve solutions in less than a day, with guidance from the arcserve technologies pre-sales team. Together arcserve High Availability and arcserve Replication ensure availability of SBL’s most critical applications and data – including email, databases, customer relationship management, finance and telephony systems. The arcserve recovery management solutions protect five terabytes of data across two Windows servers and five VMware virtualised server environments, complementing SBL’s backup solution to provide a more comprehensive business continuity strategy.
We can bring business critical applications and services back online in less than half an hour. Jeremy Needley | Technical Manager
Customer Success Story: SBL | October 2013
“The solutions enable us to continually replicate our servers to a virtualised offsite environment,” explains Needley. “Every two hours we take a snapshot of our systems in case we need to roll back, for example in the event of data corruption. We can fine tune the amount of server and bandwidth resource available to the arcserve recovery management solutions during working hours to ensure that replication processes don’t impact staff access to production systems.” The arcserve solutions are more than just reliable and easy-to-use, they also minimise the amount of time engineers spend on business continuity processes. “Once the solutions are set up, they don’t need much input from our IT team, which means we can keep operational costs low to safeguard profitability,” notes Needley. Every three months, SBL puts its disaster recovery capabilities to the test, ensuring that operations can be transferred to the replicated IT infrastructure with little impact to the business.
BENEFIT Safeguarding service continuity and supporting growth With arcserve Replication and arcserve High Availability, SBL can safeguard IT availability. Needley comments, “In the event of an incident, we can bring business critical applications and services back online in less than half an hour.” By mitigating the risks from system downtime and data loss, the arcserve recovery management solutions have helped SBL: •
Maintain high quality customer services
•
Optimise employee productivity
•
Maintain accreditation with the evolving ISO 27001 standard
•
Facilitate profitable growth
“Arcserve Replication and arcserve High Availability ensure we can provide our customers with responsive and efficient IT security services, even in the event of an IT outage. This is critical to the expansion of our business,” concludes Needley.
www.arcserve.com
Copyright ©2014 Arcserve (USA), LLC and its affiliates and subsidiaries. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. The information and results illustrated here are based upon the speaker’s experiences with the referenced software product in a variety of environments, which may include production and non production environments.
SBL safeguards business continuity with arcserve solutions
Industry: IT
CLIENT PROFILE
Employees: 100 Revenue: £100 million
BUSINESS
CHALLENGE
SOLUTION
BENEFIT
As an authorised security
SBL needs to safeguard
Arcserve® High
The solution has helped
hardware and software
customer service levels
Availability and
SBL improve its business
reseller for major vendors,
by minimising the
arcserve® Replication
continuity strategy,
SBL provides information
potential impact of
protect five terabytes of
reducing the risk of
security technologies and
unplanned system
business critical data by
disruption, safeguarding
services to the UK’s public
downtime and data loss
continually replicating
customer services
sector organisations.
on its expanding business.
physical and virtual
and ensuring ongoing
servers to a virtualised
compliance with
offsite environment.
ISO 27001 standards.
Customer Success Story: SBL | October 2013
BUSINESS Protecting organisations from information security threats SBL has been offering comprehensive range of information security products and services for over 25 years. Located a few miles north of York, the company is an authorised security software and hardware reseller for major brands, including Dell, Sourcefire, Adobe and Microsoft. The training, consultancy and services provided by SBL’s 100-strong workforce include IT security design, installation and ongoing support. These services safeguard information security for its predominantly public sector customers, which include local and central government, healthcare, education, justice and defence organisations. Formerly known as Software Box Limited, the company is committed to helping its customers keep pace with security threats from ever-evolving technology. It is currently focused on strategic growth, which involves expanding the services side of the business.
CHALLENGE Preventing disruption to customer services Good customer communications and exceptional service are crucial to achieving SBL’s plans for growing the services side of its business. The company is acutely aware of the disruption that unplanned system downtime and data loss could cause. Jeremy Needley, Technical Manager at SBL, comments: “Business continuity is increasingly critical as our business grows and more customers rely on our services. Ensuring our staff can continue to work in the event of an IT incident has become a higher priority.” As an information security advisor to top government departments, SBL needs to maintain its accreditations with the latest industry standards. “We must ensure we meet the business continuity and disaster recovery standards specified in ISO 27001,” adds Needley.
Business continuity is increasingly critical as more customers rely on our services. Jeremy Needley | Technical Manager
Customer Success Story: SBL | October 2013
The company had a comprehensive tape backup and recovery solution in place, but recovering an entire server could take up to two days. Furthermore, there was a real risk of significant data losses. “Whenever we lost a server we had to completely rebuild it and then restore the data, which could take a couple of days,” explains Needley. “We also lost that day’s data – which could be a whole day’s worth of work – because backups were only run once a day, overnight.” Having experienced the impact of losing an email server in the past, SBL recognised the need for an offline copy of its critical servers. “An email server outage would have a massive impact and be very costly because most of our customer communications are through email,” Needley confirms. To avoid disruption from unplanned outages, the company needed to ensure business critical information and services could be brought back online within minutes rather than days and data losses minimised.
SOLUTION Reliable replication and recovery With business growth at stake, SBL embarked on a project aimed at improving its business continuity strategy during the summer of 2012. The company investigated two potential solutions, including an arcserve technologies solution comprising arcserve® Replication and arcserve® High Availability. “We researched solutions from two different vendors and found that although they had very similar functionality, the arcserve solution was easier to set up,” says Needley. Needley and his team completed the rollout of the arcserve solutions in less than a day, with guidance from the arcserve technologies pre-sales team. Together arcserve High Availability and arcserve Replication ensure availability of SBL’s most critical applications and data – including email, databases, customer relationship management, finance and telephony systems. The arcserve recovery management solutions protect five terabytes of data across two Windows servers and five VMware virtualised server environments, complementing SBL’s backup solution to provide a more comprehensive business continuity strategy.
We can bring business critical applications and services back online in less than half an hour. Jeremy Needley | Technical Manager
Customer Success Story: SBL | October 2013
“The solutions enable us to continually replicate our servers to a virtualised offsite environment,” explains Needley. “Every two hours we take a snapshot of our systems in case we need to roll back, for example in the event of data corruption. We can fine tune the amount of server and bandwidth resource available to the arcserve recovery management solutions during working hours to ensure that replication processes don’t impact staff access to production systems.” The arcserve solutions are more than just reliable and easy-to-use, they also minimise the amount of time engineers spend on business continuity processes. “Once the solutions are set up, they don’t need much input from our IT team, which means we can keep operational costs low to safeguard profitability,” notes Needley. Every three months, SBL puts its disaster recovery capabilities to the test, ensuring that operations can be transferred to the replicated IT infrastructure with little impact to the business.
BENEFIT Safeguarding service continuity and supporting growth With arcserve Replication and arcserve High Availability, SBL can safeguard IT availability. Needley comments, “In the event of an incident, we can bring business critical applications and services back online in less than half an hour.” By mitigating the risks from system downtime and data loss, the arcserve recovery management solutions have helped SBL: •
Maintain high quality customer services
•
Optimise employee productivity
•
Maintain accreditation with the evolving ISO 27001 standard
•
Facilitate profitable growth
“Arcserve Replication and arcserve High Availability ensure we can provide our customers with responsive and efficient IT security services, even in the event of an IT outage. This is critical to the expansion of our business,” concludes Needley.
www.arcserve.com
Copyright ©2014 Arcserve (USA), LLC and its affiliates and subsidiaries. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. The information and results illustrated here are based upon the speaker’s experiences with the referenced software product in a variety of environments, which may include production and non production environments.
