Solving Disaster Recovery with Virtualization

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Industry: Education

Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS) is a K-12 school district in central Oklahoma. OKCPS is comprised of 79 total schools, over 36,000 students and more than 4,400 employees.

Challenge

Like many large public school systems, OKCPS had various IT challenges. Dozens of sites to network, thousands of endpoints to support and limited IT staff to manage and maintain the sprawling environment. Worries about power consumption, server sprawl and the high travel/maintenance costs of supporting a distributed server environment had increased as well.

Solution

OKCPS has an experienced and talented Network Services team but they felt needed a technology partner with deep expertise in Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery solutions. OKCPS engaged ISG Technology, a technology solution provider with extensive experience helping clients solve BC/DR challenges.

As a starting point, ISG worked with the Network Services team to perform a detailed Assessment of the OKCPS server, storage and network infrastructure. The Assessment yielded a solution design which would not only solve the DR challenge but consolidate the sprawling OKCPS infrastructure down to working data centers. The two data centers could then be configured to work together in production while providing failover capabilities in the event of a site failure.

The design included virtualization of numerous OKCPS server workloads using VMware ESX on HP C-class Blades. Once virtualized, workloads become “portable,” since virtual machines are not tied to physical hardware.

The design also included a pair of EMC CLARiiON storage arrays teamed with EMC RecoverPoint for bi-directional data replication between the two data centers. Replication assures that if one data center has an outage, data loss, or disaster the other data center can assume full function.

To simplify the recovery process, ISG recommended VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), a DR tool for virtualized environments which leverages EMC replication capabilities to automate the flow of the recovery process. SRM eliminates complex manual recovery steps and minimized the need for human intervention during a disaster — effectively a “push button” DR solution. SRM also provides a non-disruptive testing environment, so the plan can be validated and/or amended as necessary.

The final solution component was for Backup at each site using Data Domain appliances to provide an additional layer of data protection. Data Domain is a tapeless backup solution which provides industry leading data “deduplication” which can dramatically decrease storage capacity requirements and costs.

Results

Implementation of the solution went smoothly, according to Steve Washam, Director of Network Services for OKCPS. “The project went very well. Our team did a great job. Dean Coit (ISG Solution Architect) went above and beyond the call of duty to help us.”

“ISG’s expertise was critical to our success.”

Steve Washam, Director of Network Services for OKCPS

The key result achieved was a robust DR plan which can be tested, amended and validated during business hours without having to take down production systems. The new DR plan also provides detailed test reports which can be provided to auditors upon request.

Another notable benefit of the solution was a significant reduction in power consumption and energy costs. Prior to implementation, OKCPS had reached the capacity limits of the existing power plant. But the virtualized environment reduced power requirements and eliminated the need to invest in a new, larger UPS.

A final benefit resulted from the consolidation and centralization. The bloated travel and maintenance costs of supporting the former distributed environment were all but eliminated in the new solution.

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Managed Services Solve Multiple Challenges

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Industry: Finance

In the past, all of OSBC’s file and email servers were kept in the office of the institution’s director of IT, but eventually OSBC outgrew its in-house approach:

Challenge

  • It had high data security requirements, putting a premium on safe handling of data and regular monitoring of infrastructure.
  • Its building was normally shut down on weekends to save power and energy. Accordingly, temperatures inside the server room could rise to almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit by Monday morning while the air conditioning was off.
  • Overall, the OSBC needed professional IT services that were economically feasible and wouldn’t require building their own data centers from scratch.

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The Bama Companies See Value In Virtualized Desktops

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Industry: Hospitality

Founded in 1927,  The  Bama Companies,  Inc., is an innovator of wholesome bakery products, such as hand-held pies, biscuits, buns, pie shells, and pizza crust. Bama serves the Quick Service Restaurants, Fast Casual, Casual Dining, and Broadline Channels of the Foodservice Industry for the largest, most well-known restaurant chains on the planet.

Click to read the case study

Challenge

Bama had aging PC’s spread across their environment; they were experiencing high support costs, and needed an efficient and cost-effective plan to refresh their PC fleet.

In addition, they wanted to enhance the performance of their user associates Windows desktop environment.

They were also looking for ways to improve process management and deliver secure desktops to their manufacturers and outside the company to employees around the world. Finally, Bama hoped to provide users the same environment across various remote devices.

Solution

Eric Spille, Manager of Technical Services for Bama, turned to ISG Technology for assistance with this company-wide project. ISG worked out a program to move the company to Citrix XenDesktop Enterprise so that desktops could be delivered virtually to associates.

ISG conducted an initial pilot with 25 users to provide a proof-of-concept. Based on that success, Spille decided to expand the XenDesktop solution out to all users.

With ISG’s expertise, Bama installed redundant Citrix NetScaler controllers as access brokers to enhance the XenDesktop delivery and significantly improve the user interface.  Additionally, Bama’s Exchange environment is secured by the NetScalers, which handle the security and access processes now. The Netscalers keep their data safe.

Results

Bama replaced old desktops with thin clients for an immediate cost savings and a reduction of their total cost of ownership. Refresh cycles were extended from four to eight years, which doubled the lifespan of their hardware—at half the cost.

“What made everything easier for us was the impressive level of Citrix expertise at ISG,” said Spille. “ISG knows Citrix really well. We felt very fortunate to have access to someone of that caliber. I don’t think anyone in this area even comes close.”

User experience was improved. “We can provide our employees with a Windows desktop with 12 seconds of login,” said Spille. “That’s impressive.”

Bama also experienced several incremental benefits.  “While our main goal was to put a thin client at everyone’s desk, we always struggled with patches in the past,” said Spille. “This new upgrade allowed us to provide over 300 users with a single image. That’s a huge savings and process improvement for us.”

Thanks to the Netscalers, Bama also experienced an increase in data security. Executives and sales associates who access Bama’s network remotely—regardless of device—are only viewing the data they need, without having data reside on the local device itself. Company data remains safely in the data center.

Bama was impressed with ISG’s commitment to the project. “Having a single point of contact really helped the project run smoothly. Hal Davey was truly an advocate for us. ISG asked the right questions,” said Spille. “This allowed us to proactively avoid issues, and get it right the first time.”

Hosted Voice Enables Mobility For Legasus Group, LC

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Industry: Business Management

Legasus Group, LC is an advisory firm that works with families in business to perpetuate and sustain family enterprises. Smoothing transitions from generation to generation, Legasus Group advisors integrate relational and managerial sciences within a living systems model to better utilize the potential and talents of all stakeholders.

Click to read the case study

Challenge

Since Legasus Group teams frequently travel to their client sites, they require a mobility solution that helps them access their records and files on the road. Previously they had used a local IT service provider and another provider for internet and voice, creating difficulties with maintaining a high level of quality of service.
“There was a lot of finger pointing,” said Matt Kuzma, Chief Operating Officer at Legasus Group. “We had a hard time resolving issues through to completion, because no one was taking responsibility.”

Solution

Legasus Group became familiar with ISG Technology after attending an overview of ISG Hosted Voice and bandwidth offerings, which they felt was a good fit with their strategic goals. They put out a bid for distributed access, so that their team could work remotely with the same experience as if they were in the office. Legasus Group detailed required business outcomes, and asked bidders to submit their best recommendation.
“We decided to pursue the relationship with ISG. It was very intriguing to have a single service provider that could address all our service needs,” said Kuzma. “Their Hosted Voice solution gave us powerful features that help our team accomplish their work and remain in touch while traveling.”
ISG delivered bandwidth connectivity, a new server, and rolled out their business class Hosted Voice solution. This was accomplished in a one-month transition timeframe.

Results

Kuzma set an aggressive cutover goal at first, and worked with ISG to put the planning in place. The team worked back and forth to give enough time to get the server up and rolling and all relevant permissions migrated to the cloud. “I wasn’t expecting a magic wand. The ISG team worked to find resolution for a few issues that cropped up. They diagnosed the root problem to find a quick resolution,” said Kuzma.

Getting Hosted Voice implemented went smoothly, and all the phones were swapped out at once.

“When we have technical problems, we call or email the issue to their Support Center and ISG will diagnose to fix the issue. They send a complete ticket with all the details documented, and the techs are knowledgeable and courteous,” said Kuzma.

“We have a hybrid model accounting software that is server based, and our response times have increased since the move. Best of all, ISG has lifted the burden of managing the server off of our plate.”

The Client’s View

“ISG listened closely up front to understand our needs, and then delivered a partnership solution that makes the most sense for Legasus Group. With continued support from ISG Hosted Voice, our team can get their jobs done while they are on the road.”

Matt Kuzma
Chief Operating Officer
Legasus Group

What do you need to do to move to the cloud?

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Technological development often moves so fast that companies have trouble keeping up. The cloud is one of these advancements, where it feels like just yesterday the service was new and untested. But the cloud has been around for a while now, and its worth has been proven time and again. In fact, the cloud is so useful that a Spiceworks survey found that 93 percent of respondents were using it for at least one function.

That said, there are still a lot of organizations that haven’t included a cloud solution in their IT strategy. Many of these businesses want to make the move, but they aren’t sure where to start. To that effect, let’s discuss what you need to do before you can make a move to the cloud:

Know your workload

As with any other change in IT protocol, the first step here is to ensure that you know as much as you can about your current workload. For a movement to the cloud, this means figuring out just how many of your operations have been virtualized so far. Transitioning these kinds of tasks to a cloud environment is much easier than doing so for a non-virtualized workload, so you should also be looking to see if you can virtualize more than you already do.

The hard part of this step is that no one can tell you what your workload looks like. Each company is different, and you’ll need to investigate and speak with your internal IT team in order to get all the details you need. This might end up taking up the most time out of these steps, but it’s more than worth it.

“Should you choose public or private?”

Learn about the different kinds of cloud

Now that you have a deep understanding of the data and workloads you want to transition, it’s time to start thinking about the type of cloud you want to be working with. Basically, this is going to boil down to two distinct options: a public or a private cloud. A lot of people like to include colocation into this discussion, and while this service is certainly beneficial for many clients, it technically isn’t part of the cloud.

That aside, should you choose public or private? Well, the answer to this isn’t that simple as they both have advantages and disadvantages. The public cloud is incredibly popular across multiple industries for the lower cost that comes from sharing resources between separate organizations. In fact, Gartner predicted the public cloud services market to hit $204 billion sometime this year. That said, because these computing resources are shared, many in the industry have noted that public cloud options have certain security issues. This isn’t to say that the public cloud is unsafe. Rather, it’s less secure than the private cloud, which is this service’s main advantage

Because private clouds are – by nature – built with a specific client in mind, they are often viewed as the most secure cloud option. Having your own private cloud also has some benefits in terms of control over the server, which is something a lot of organizations want. On the other hand, all of these benefits come at a high initial cost.

Do you really need private cloud services?Which is best for your company?

Understand your security posture and need for control

There’s no perfect cloud solution that fits all industries and business models, and as such you’ll need to figure out what your company can afford and whether or not you really need the control of your own private cloud. Some administrators who need to be heavily involved in their cloud infrastructure often opt for a private cloud. If you don’t need to be this hands-on and aren’t looking to spend a lot of money up front, the public cloud is probably for you.

In a similar vein, it can be hard for administrators to realize the reality of their security situation. These officials sometimes jump to the conclusion that less security means no security, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The public cloud is a perfectly viable option for keeping your data safe, and it shouldn’t be viewed as a dangerous option just because the private cloud is more secure.

Migration is work

Regardless of which cloud you end up choosing, or even if you go with a combination of the two for a hybrid cloud environment, it’s important to remember that this transition is going to take a lot of time and effort. That’s not to say this process isn’t absolutely worth it, but administrators need to know that moving to the cloud requires a lot of skill and expertise.

This is why company leaders should look to partner with a knowledgeable cloud provider such as ISG Technology. Our cloud experts have years of experience in the field, and can help smooth the transition for your company and its IT workloads.

The Boardroom vs. IT: Who drives change?

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When it comes to ensuring business continuity and keeping all parts working properly, it’s crucial for communications between departments to be easy and effective. You especially want interaction between executives and IT administrators to be productive. In those conversations, if there is any kind of disconnect with either party, bottom lines could suffer.

How does the proper implementation of IT impact corporate objectives? Having the right technology solution in place can make a difference in the long run across the board, but decision-makers sometimes don’t consult their IT departments before investing in something new. According to InformationWeek contributor Andrew Froehlich, this may be due in part to the fact that new technologies are constantly coming out, sometimes so quickly that tech staff can’t keep up.

Shadow IT is creating cybersecurity vulnerabilities for enterprises.

Shadow IT is compounding this issue even further. With the continued implementation of bring-your-own-device policies, extraneous technologies make their way into companies’ networks. Employees are carrying their smartphones and tablets into the workplace and downloading different – and perhaps unapproved – applications to use in their jobs. This creates cybersecurity and compliance issues due to the entrance of unknown actors on the network.

For instance, one study from 2014 on the information systems of health care organizations found that the average provider has 928 cloud services running on its systems – only 10 percent of which are known to their IT departments. In addition, only 7 percent of the total systems on the cloud comply with industry-specific standards. These kinds of statistics illustrate why it’s crucial for the IT department to be involved in the decision-making process of any company. To ensure compliance and maintain security, technology teams and executives need to be on the same page.

Different departments need to work together to elicit the best outcome for a business – meaning that to achieve the best bottom line, communication between IT staff and the executive board needs to be efficient. Computer Weekly contributor Marc Cercere noted that the agendas of both the business technology and IT departments are equally as important to focus on and improve.

For instance, due to the increase in shadow IT and the continuing focus on cybersecurity across every industry, the IT department should be consulted about any change to technology strategy. Instead of implementing tech “solutions” that may or may not solve a company’s problems, getting the go-ahead from the IT department allows every portion of the company to work in unison toward the same goal.

In today’s business climate, technology should align with corporate objectives. You want IT to work in your favor. If relationships within your business between executives and the IT department aren’t up to par, costly disconnect can occur, and business processes can be hampered.

3 things the boardroom needs to know about ITaaS

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While a separation of responsibilities is necessary to keep focus within an organization, it has a major downside: The boardroom is often left in the dark concerning IT issues. Executives should be taking an active role in tech maintenance and advancement within the company, and one of the great ways they can go about doing this is through IT-as-a-Service.

To that effect, let’s take a look at the top three things the boardroom should know about ITaaS:

“CIOs think their IT teams should be 58 percent bigger.”

1. Internal IT teams are often understaffed

The first – and perhaps most important – reason why the boardroom should consider ITaaS is the fact that many business IT departments are overworked. A study conducted by Robert Half Technology found that CIOs don’t think they have enough employees to effectively get the job done. In fact, the survey discovered that CIOs think their IT teams should be 58 percent bigger than they currently are.

While this makes for a stressful work environment, the real problem with this situation is the fact that stretching IT employees too thin can be dangerous for a company’s data health. PandaLabs, a cybersecurity research collective, observed and neutralized nearly 84 million unique pieces of malware in 2015 alone. That accounts for more than 27 percent of malware observations made by PandaLabs, which shows just how hard hackers are working to steal private information. Leaving something like malware removal to an already understaffed, overworked IT team is clearly just asking for trouble.

2. It helps to get fresh eyes on your network

Building a network for an organization is a very personal experience. IT workers pride themselves on creating a network from the ground up, but problems arise when these employees get too grounded in their routine and begin to overlook certain aspects. Working with a system for a long time allows blind spots to develop, and it’s often advantageous to have an outside professional come in and assess the situation.

A good example of this has to do with the security of company data. An IT administrator working with the local network might focus on educating employees about phishing scams or ensuring that all software is completely updated, but might miss the fact that users are accessing network data through unencrypted means. A network assessment from an outside MSP can help to plug these kinds of holes.

Having someone assess a network provides fresh eyes on it. Making sure a network is running as efficiently as possible is a major concern.

3. Implementing new policies demands refined expertise

As a rule, IT workers are highly skilled individuals. But, as the above examples show, sometimes they need a little help. This is especially true when implementing a new technology plan, such as a bring-your-own-device policy. With Forrester Research predicting that organizations the world over will be using 200 million BYOD smartphones in 2016, it’s clear this is an important trend.

Although BYOD has amazing benefits like reduced hardware costs, it certainly has its downsides. Compliance standards often have strict regulations regarding BYOD, as allowing employees to bring devices from home increases security concerns. Organizations looking to implement such a policy might not be able to foresee all the problems that need addressing, and therefore might increase the risks of a data breach or even downtime. Working with an ITaaS provider such as ISG Technology can mitigate these risks, helping to ensure a smooth BYOD rollout.

Staying Relevant Requires Flexible IT

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In the new Idea Economy, the ability to turn an idea into a new product or business has never been easier or more accessible. Competitors are everywhere, creating disruptive waves of new demands and opportunities.

Today, an entrepreneur with a good idea has access to all of the infrastructure and resources that a traditional Fortune 1000 company would have, and they can pay for it all with a credit card. They can rent compute on demand, get a SAAS ERP system, use PayPal or Square for transactions, they can market using Facebook or Google, and have FedEx run their supply chain.

The days of needing millions of dollars to launch a new company or bring a new idea to market are fading fast. You don’t have to look any further than more recent companies such as Vimeo, One Kings Lane or Dock to Dish–or with more common names like Salesforce, Airbnb, Netflix and Pandora to see how the Idea Economy is exploding.

And how about Uber? Uber’s impact has been dramatic since it launched its application to connect riders and drivers in 2009.  Without owning a single car, it now serves more than 250 cities in 55 countries and has completely disrupted the taxi industry. San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency says that cab use has dropped 65 percent in San Francisco in two years.

This presents an opportunity and a challenge for most enterprises. Cloud, mobile, big data and analytics give you the tools to accelerate speed and time to value. Technology helps you combine applications and data to create dramatically new experiences and new markets.

Creating and delivering new business models, solutions and experiences requires harnessing new types of apps, data and risk as well as implementing new ways to build, operate and consume. Technology no longer simply supports the business, it IS the business.

But most organizations have been built with rigid, inflexible IT infrastructures that are costly to maintain and that make it difficult, if not impossible, to implement new ideas quickly. To succeed in today’s Idea Economy, you need an IT infrastructure that lets you pivot when the inevitable disruption arrives.

Colocation: Having your cake and eating it, too (Part 2 of 2)

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In our previous article in this series, we discussed the many benefits of colocation. While there are obviously many advantages to this service, some businesses are better suited for a colocation package than others. There are a lot of factors to consider before implementing such a plan. Chief among them is to fully understand what your company is and what it will be. How much storage space do you currently require? Do you see massive growth in your organization’s future? What are your capital expenditure and operational expenditure requirements for data storage?

These aren’t easy questions to answer, but they are absolutely vital in understanding whether or not colocation is right for your business. So, with that in mind, which companies should be looking into colocation?

Colocation has benefits across multiple organizations. Many different kinds of businesses can benefit from off-premises data storage.

Who benefits the most?

While we’ve already discussed the cost advantages of colocation, reduced capital expenditures are something just about any company could benefit from. Colocation has advantages for businesses of all sizes, but it truly excels for smaller companies or organizations that are predicting a lot of growth in their business. This is because colocation works wonders when it comes to scalability.

When your business grows, your data needs grow with it. While you obviously want your operation to continue to develop and mature, handling these increased data storage requirements can be incredibly hard to handle. In past years, scaling up generally meant having to requisition more and more space for your servers. If your business was still in its infancy or your facility just didn’t have a lot of space, this was a lot easier said than done.

With a colocation package from a managed service provider, the sky’s the limit in terms of your data needs. Scaling up simply requires the purchase of new hardware as well as a renegotiation of your terms. Never again will you have to worry about where you’ll put yet another server.

What should you be looking for in a colocation partner?

You’ve taken a hard look at the data and scalability requirements of your facility and have decided that colocation is right for you. Now it’s time to search for a provider that can give your company what it needs. When it comes to selecting a partner, there are a few requirements every business owner should be aware of.

First and foremost, you should do research into what kind of surveillance you can expect from this provider. Will your data systems be monitored at all times by a fully-functioning staff? If so, how knowledgeable are these employees, and will they be easily reached in the event of a late-night IT issue? On top of that, you need to know if the facility has backup generators in the event of a power failure.

“40 percent of small businesses close permanently after a natural disaster.”

Aside from these concerns, another area you should focus on is the MSP’s involvement in disaster recovery. Harvey Betan, a business continuity consultant, stated in a TechTarget article that colocation facilities work well as a backup disaster recovery location, as they are generally meant to be far away from your building. Considering the Red Cross has reported that nearly 40 percent of small businesses close permanently after a natural disaster, having your data in a separate location could prove incredibly useful.

Thankfully, ISG Technology has the ability to facilitate all of these needs and more. After years of experience in the disaster recovery business, ISG Technology can help ensure the safety of your data. What’s more, we guarantee 24/7/365 monitoring of the data systems within our facility, and our backup generators help to ensure you can access your data when you need it most.

Colocation: Having your cake and eating it too (Part 1 of 2)

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With all of the information collected as a normal course of conducting business these days, it’s not surprising so many companies are beginning to focus more heavily on their data storage needs. Keeping things in line used to mean having a properly labeled file cabinet, but client information has evolved well beyond this.

As a solution to storage woes, many companies are beginning to lean toward colocation. This is where a business takes its own servers and stores them at an outside data center. Once the servers have been transported, the facility’s staff take care of requirements such as cooling and bandwidth. The popularity of this service has been exploding recently, and MarketsandMarkets has predicted the global colocation market to be hit more than $54 billion by 2020.

Colocation is an amazing innovation, so let’s take some time to discuss the advantages of this service in depth:

Colocation has a lot of benefits. Colocation just makes sense for many businesses.

Advantages you can expect

As touched on above, one of the biggest reasons companies make the switch is that they don’t have the ability to actually care for their servers. Whether it’s a concern about not having the proper staff to care for the machines or even just not having the physical space, colocation allows companies the unique opportunity to utilize data center services without actually building one themselves. CAPEX and OPEX costs such as these are severely reduced when implementing a colocation solution, allowing business administrators a little more breathing room in their budgets.

On top of receiving services like server cooling and power without directly having to pay for them on premises, companies that purchase a colocation plan are also likely guaranteed certain conditions under their service-level agreement. According to TechTarget’s Margaret Rouse, an SLA may include anything from uptime guarantees to performance benchmarks.

“Data is at the center of your business.”

Another amazing benefit of colocation is that the managed service providers within the data centers often also offer disaster recovery solutions. While this is certainly a great addition to a colocation package, it also means that a facility that provides disaster recovery is most likely safer than any other company you’ve ever dealt with. These professionals are experts at mitigating the risks of a disaster, which means your servers will be incredibly secure in their hands. Data is at the center of your business, and making sure that it’s safe should be your top priority.

ISG Technology can help you implement a solution

If you’re thinking of taking advantage of this amazing innovation, there’s been no better time than now. ISG Technology is a leading colocation expert, with years of experience satisfying the data storage needs of our clients. Even a single server can be relocated to an ISG Technology facility, making this service right for businesses of multiple sizes.

Although colocation has quite a lot of advantages, certain companies can benefit more than others by implementing such a solution. In the second part of this series, we’ll delve more deeply into which organizations can expect the most out this service.