Cloudware Disaster Recovery
A Case Study:
A grudge purchase? Much like insurance, there is a perception amongst many customers that Disaster Recovery and Continuity only become relevant after a disaster happens, and once it’s happened the opportunity for return on investment has already passed. The normal statement… what are the chances of it happening again?
The reality is the costs of providing seamless DR and Continuity have historically been far too high, and due to this legacy, many customers would far rather take the risk of facing a disaster, than spend the required investment ensuring a disaster won’t bring them to their knees. Over and above the cost, comes the complexity… how do you ensure that when disaster strikes, the DR and failover you’ve invested in will work first time. If they don’t, the impact is both the disaster itself, as well as the failed investment in avoiding it.
If the high cost and complexity can be removed from this equation, DR and Failover become the norm; a commodity that all organizations accept as part of securing their business at an affordable cost.
One of the largest providers of supply, logistics and finance in the Steel industry worldwide, with representative offices in South Africa, has been exploring the above scenarios for some time. As with many large organizations, they have their own private Primary Data Centre, and a second geographically remote Data Centre for replication of their Business Critical Data, hosted by a well-known ISP. Their replication was facilitated through a high-speed fibre link, joining the respective Data Centres, and ensuring their SAP Data remained current in both facilities. This aspect of DR and Continuity is certainly the least complex, and forms the foundation… simply ensuring a backup / replication of current and relevant Data to another location. The complexity is apparent when you look at how to seamlessly access the Data at the DR site, and continue working without interruption, should the Primary Data Centre experience a disaster. Interestingly, the solution to both the cost and complexity barriers comes from Virtualization technology; the ability to deliver the applications that interact with Data from anywhere, at anytime, instantaneously.
Turrito Networks began working with the above Customer in late 2011, providing a proprietary virtualization license, known as Cloudware, to virtualize the Customers’ Business Critical Applications to any device, from any server environment. The intention for the Customer was to make end-user devices irrelevant. You could immediately work with any Windows, Linux or Apple based application on the device of your choice (iPads, Android Devices, Smart Phones, Laptops, Thin Clients etc). Turrito Networks completed the rollout of the POC, and the Customer began running tests on the virtualization technology, delivering their now centralized applications (primarily SAP GUI) to users in any region, on any device they chose. Turrito Networks had in passing highlighted Cloudware’s ability to allow instant and seamless failover to any geographic location and server environment, but this was not part of the initial scope of testing the Customers’ Application Virtualization.
In early 2012, during the testing period of Cloudware, the Customer experienced their largest and most impactful outage of their Primary Data Centre. The consequences of the outage were potentially crippling, and although their Data was safely replicated to the DR facility, they had no way of remotely accessing it, and no way of allowing their admin staff to continue working without interruption. A senior technical resource for the Customer recalled Turrito’s discussion around the failover and continuity capabilities of Cloudware, and minutes after the Primary DC outage, pulled the Cloudware licenses from the Primary Server, and uploaded them to the DR Facility. Within 20 minutes of the primary site outage, all the Customers admin users were immediately back to work on their Applications, unaware that they were now being delivered from a totally new location at the DR site. Their applications were simply accessible once again, from any device, and work returned to normal, whilst their IT department began repairing the primary site outage.
Cloudware received a call the following morning from the Customer, confirming that their disaster had been averted by the quick action of one of their resources, and the Cloudware virtualization licenses that brought their business back online. Since the incident, the Customer has finalized their new architecture, including Cloudware licenses at both their Primary and DR facilities. In the event of a Primary site outage, their users would not even be aware of the failure, as their applications would instantly be delivered from the DR facility, without manual intervention, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional DR and Continuity solutions.
One of the primary functions of Cloudware technology, is to enable virtual delivery of applications from any location & environment, to any location and device, over any connection. Licensing is enabled within an hour on any prepared customer environment, and access to Primary or Secondary / DR is instant. This is the next step in Business Continuity solutions, and changes the way businesses interact with their most critical applications. A truly scalable and seamless approach to robust business continuity.
Cloudware enables instant DR, from anywhere in the world.
