Leveraging the Cloud - Industry Panel Discussion

At a recent Global Storage seminar on Leveraging the Cloud – Enterprise Managed Services, organisations talked about their pain points for Disaster Recovery and Back up and how Global Storage’s Enterprise Managed Disaster Recovery and Backup services, EnvironmentReady™ and DataReady™ have helped alleviate these. The panel consisted of CIOs and IT Managers from Middletons Law Firm, Pacific Hydro, Southern Rural Water, Sustainability Victoria and Heart Foundation.

Following is the discussion by these leading organisations about Global Storage Managed Services for disaster recovery and backup, the engagement process to implement these and the benefits that were delivered.

Middletons – Sam Sofianos, Director, Technology Services

Question: When Global Storage first engaged with Middletons, they were facing some immediate challenges in backup. Can you tell us about how DataReady helped solve these challenges?

Sam Sofianos: Our immediate problem was that our backups were eating into the working day. We needed to address that and so we looked at whether it was worthwhile investing capital into buying equipment and de duplication software or other alternatives in the market place.

We engaged Global Storage and talked to them about the DataReady offering from the outset and it really sorted out our backup window issues. From our perspective, it was a really good holistic solution in that it addressed a number of other things , like ensuring that that our data was stored in an offsite secure location as well as in a top tier data centre, which is important for a law firm. It simplified our backups and enabled us to centralise and standardise our backup process and has enabled us to redeploy resources in other areas.

We were really happy with GlobalView (Management & Monitoring System) as we found it very easy to use and it simplified bringing back files, particularly ones that are stored within the cloud for the first 30 days.

Question: Understanding it makes sense from a cost perspective to extend into Disaster Recovery, can you talk to us about the value Middletons see in implementing EnvironmentReady?

Sam Sofianos: Global Storage already backs up our data, so we’re pretty much three quarters of the way there. This makes it an easy decision for us. EnvironmentReady is a good ‘value-add’, so from our perspective it just makes a lot of sense to extend into this.

From a capital expenditure perspective, for us to try and replicate disaster recovery and do it all ourselves, it would take significant financial investment. It makes sense for us to partner further with Global Storage - we have already got confidence in the product and it will really simplify our Disaster Recovery.

Pacific Hydro – Daniel Hayward, IT Manager

Question: Pacific Hydro went through a 12 month process of evaluating their requirements for DR. Can you tell us about that process and how much of it was driven by IT and how much was driven by the board?

Daniel Hayward: In terms of whether it was more IT drivenor Board driven, it started off with IT exploring the options of what we could potentially be looking at in the future, and then was backed up by the audit and risk committee , which analysed risks in the IT infrastructure, one of which being that our disaster recovery was inadequate.

With the backing of the Audit and Risk Report, disaster recovery became a high priority on our agenda and we now had the knowledge that the management and the Board would seriously consider what we were putting forward. We then completed our proposal outlining the currents system, weaknesses, and comparison of appropriate products from different vendors, which was presented to management and the Board. By about mid 2008 we had signed off on the project. (to implement EnvironmentReady Managed Disaster Recovery).

Question: Pacific Hydro was an early adopter of VMware. Can you tell us what was important for Pacific Hydro in protecting and recovering a virtualised environment?

Daniel Hayward: As an early adopter of VM Ware, we already knew the features and benefits of VMware, which we use on a day to day basis. We knew that it was important for us to have those same features and flexibility inside the disaster recovery site. In terms of costs, it (EnvironmentReady) meant that we did not have to put in a large amount of capital and we were to expect a monthly price. Prices would only grow when our data and resources grew, which meant it was a lot easier to budget for. It was important for us to know that EnvironmentReady was going to make it a lot easier for us to conduct testing on our DR environment, and that testing with a live full communications cut over would be easy and seamless to cut over and cut back.

Southern Rural Water – Amit Khairajani, ICT Manager

Question: As part of the business case for Environment Ready, SRW conducted a detailed TCO analysis of an inhouse DR solution, versus outsourcing. Could you tell us about this process and how Global Storage Managed services compared to building an inhouse DR solution?

Amit Khairajani: We tendered out the whole Disaster Recovery solution and got three or four different kinds of proposals. The two we looked at closely were the Global Storage proposal for a managed service and one that was for setting up a replicated site. We had our own offices, so we did not have to purchase or lease a separate site for DR, but we calculated the cost of running a similar sort of set up at our second site and found the Global Storage services to be more cost efficient. We looked at the total cost of ownership of running a one to one service off the same number of servers as san replication across the sites, taking into account the cost of power, cooling and the cost of resources that you’ve got to keep at hand to make sure that if there was a disaster, the solution would actually work, especially after such a major investment.

Our total cost of ownership with the Global Storage solution was actually lower than the total cost of ownership for replicating the entire environment to set up a second site. We had our own offices, so we did not have to purchase or lease a separate site for DR, but we calculated the cost of running a similar sort of set up at our second site and found the Global Storage services to be more cost efficient.

We looked at the cost of actually running a second site, taking into account the cost of power, cooling and the cost of resources that you’ve got to keep at hand to make sure that if there was a disaster, the solution would actually work. It just made sense to choose the Global Storage managed service - the total cost was lower, the solution was fully managed so we didn’t need our own resources to manage it and the solution completely mitigates our risk in the event of a disaster. We have been affected by natural disasters such as fires as floods, several times in the last few years and we could not accept the risk of not knowing whether we will still be ok after such an event. We needed a DR solution in place that we know will work when needed and Global Storage provide this for us.

Question: EnvironmentReady provides regular testing of the disaster recovery plan. Could you please tell us about how SRW has found this testing to benefit the organisation and about the level of comfort this testing provides that your DR plan will work when needed?

Amit Khairajani: We just finished the third DR test and it was successful. The testing is very simple and we don’t have to worry too much about it - Global Storage recover our environment to their recovery servers. We simply activate it and a couple of days later, we get in, test all our applications, make sure all our data is up to date and get the business to sign off on it. Within two weeks we have a report that goes to the board saying everything is signed off and everything is a success. What that does is give comfort to the business that the DR solution will work when activated and the testing process is a stress we don’t have anymore.

Sustainability Victoria – Patrick O’Brien, ICT Services Manager

Question: Sustainability Victoria carried out a Business Impact Analysis to understand the risk to and exposure of the organisation. Can you tell us about the key outcomes of the BIA and how Global Storage has helped addressed the BIA requirements?

Patrick O’Brien: The key findings of the business impact analysis were that the key business activities rely heavily on the ICT systems such as the data bases, business applications and email and that withoutthese ICT systems the business would struggle to meet its vision and purpose. The recommendation was thatwith so much reliance upon ICT systems it is imperative that the ICT Disaster Recovery Plan is integrated with the business recovery plans andthese need to be planned around the Maximum Acceptable Outage figuresfor these key business activities.

So how did Global Storage help? The disaster recovery as a managed service is really disaster recovery made easy. For us we didn’t have to look at any additional resources and the implementation of the service was a breeze - it went forward in three months from time of implementation to test.

The DataReady managed backup service, now allows us to hold 30 days of data onsite and it means that the recovery of data for single systems or a total server can be completed in a matter of hours. The EnvironmentReady managed service has been tested and has allowed us to recover the whole of our ICT operations well within the maximum acceptable outage time.

Question: Considering the charter of Sustainability Victoria, to have a positive impact on sustainability, what environmental factors were examined when comparing EnvironmentReady to a more traditional DR solution?

Patrick O’Brien: At Sustainability Victoria we measure all energy that we use in the organisation and that includes measuring all energy used to provide ICT services. We are continually looking at ways to improve our energy consumption and at how can we improve that through better use of ICT technologies. When we look at our products and services we evaluate them on environmental criteria as well as functionality, cost and standard issues.

So when we were looking for a disaster recovery service we were really unsure what would be the implications for our energy use ie. how would adding another service impact our energy use? Some of the standard offerings we were looking at such as running dedicated servers with the associated infrastructure offsite did not look good. We were a bit concerned that some of these solutions were potentially going to double our energy use.

When we reviewed the Global Storage managed services solution, it was quite exciting to see an opportunity to introduce a disaster recovery service that would achieve our maximum recovery times and at the same time address our energy issues.The Global Storage solution was way out in front in the environmental evaluation.

Heart Foundation – Alan Arthur, National IT Manager

Question: For Heart Foundation, an important part of the approval process was to also have the IT team on board with the outsourcing position. How did you go about achieving this?

Alan Arthur: When we were looking at the various options for disaster recovery, such as internally hosted, partially outsourced and fully outsourced, we realised that there were going to be differing resourcing requirements for each of those, and also that it was going to be a fairly significant change management exercise as far as the IT team were concerned.
It’s quite a change of mind set when you’ve got system administrators who are used to having physical systems, tapes that are moved around the place on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, to the concept of having an appliance which holds a full 30 days of backup and also having a full 3 months of online backup available.

Conceptually we found it difficult to get our minds around how that would actually work and how the DataReady and EnvironmentReady services would be provided. So we had a series of workshops with Global Storage where they ran through the process in terms of how the backups and restorations worked. By the time we had gone through those, our system administrators were quite comfortable with the solution and actually quite excited about what it could provide for us in terms of being able to perform file restoration and not having to worry about of moving tapes and maintaining separate physical servers from a DR environment.
So by Global Storage providing the resources to run the work shops for us, what could potentially have been an issue from a change management point of view actually worked out to be quite a selling point of the system with our system administrators as we went down the process, which was great.

Question: Heart Foundation has national offices with distributed sites. As a national customer, can you tell us how you found the engagement from a project delivery, coordination and rollout perspective?

Alan Arthur: As we went through the due diligence process as part of the proposal, we spent a lot of time talking to Global Storage about their offering and how it works. We spoke to reference customers as well, asking some of the uncomfortable questions about when it doesn’t work and what problems have occurred. I was happy to say that all of those reference checks were quite positive and people seemed genuinely happy with the offering.

When we had the proposal approved and started working with Global Storage to do the implementation, it was evident that what they had demonstrated in the proposal phase and said they were going to do in the engagement, was not just talk. They actually delivered on that. It was quite clear from the very first kick off meeting that they’d obviously been through the process before. In terms of supplying all the project templates and documentation for data capture and information, they knew what they were doing.

Whilst we were looking at the process as something that was a bit unique and potentially had some risks and concerns from our point of view, it was very much shown that Global Storage had done this before - they knew what they were doing and they turned up with the right information. We basically came away from all the project meetings with the feeling that they were doing what they said they would do as part of the proposal, they’re asking the right questions and saying the right things. So that comfort level we got with the initial proposal followed through to the implementation delivery and having done our first test in the last couple of weeks it has flowed through to that as well.