University Research Co.

Case Study

Seagate Makes Data Protection the Easy Part of Managing Global Aid

Challenges • Rapid organizational growth • Inadequate infrastructure to handle increased data Company • Diverse field offices requiring standardized remote backup University Research Co., LLC • Field staff using outdated data preservation methods Industry • Mistrust of existing solution leading to overstretched IT staff Public Health Consulting

Location Results Bethesda, MD • Rapid deployment of backup solution Contact • SaaS delivery for lower cost and ease of use for field staff www.urc-chs.com • Excellent support, including upward growth planning • At least eight person-hours per month freed up for other IT tasks University Research Co.

In any given month, University Research Co., LLC (URC) might support a Wellness Day “Due to the nature of our business and in Swaziland, research on maternal mortality in Cambodia, and a satellite broadcast the diversity of our field network, we from an international AIDS conference in Washington, DC. A well-established leader present a number of challenges for the in global development aid, URC is all too familiar with the extraordinary challenges of backup and recovery vendor community. working in widely dispersed, remote communities: lack of reliable infrastructure such as electricity, clean power, and Internet bandwidth; unstable governments and banking Seagate is as close to a ‘set it and forget systems and widespread theft. Add URC’s four-fold revenue growth over five years, it’ solution as we could have expected.” and you’ve got a data protection nightmare. Jonathon Rokita, Director of Technology, Meeting Complexity with Simplicity University Research Company, LLC Established in 1965 to improve quality and access to health, social, and education services in the US and abroad, URC is an international leader in public health consulting and supporting such organizations as the US Agency for International Development and the World Health Organization in areas of acute-need low- and middle-income countries. When exceptional growth brought URC’s annual revenue to $100 million, URC Director of Technology Jonathan Rokita recognized that the firm’s IT system—an Acronis backup solution hooked to an NAS (networked attached storage) device hosting large file servers—was inadequate to match URC’s growth. In addition, URC staff in particularly unstable locations were going to extraordinary lengths to preserve field office data, including backing up data on USB drives and taking them home for security and availability. It was time for URC to rethink its data management, backup, and infrastructure system.

The Search Is On! An affiliate to the non-profit Center for Human Services, URC is bound by procurement regulations that require it to undergo a public search for technical services and support. Rokita and his team compared EVault from Seagate® to other data protection solutions, including Symantec, Iron Mountain, and incumbent Acronis. “We were looking for a vendor who could help us manage our rapid growth,” says Rokita. “We needed a team we could trust with services like monitoring our Network Operations Center and warning us well in advance about space or redundancy issues related to growth.” URC also needed a solution it could confidently deploy in challenging locations throughout the world. “We have offices in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, the Ivory Coast and Tanzania, for which communication with our Bethesda headquarters is critical,” says Rokita. “Doing so reliably is especially hard when, for example, the Ethiopian government declared voice tools like Skype illegal.” Larger URC field offices have dedicated IT staff, but smaller ones do not, so URC subcontracts with local vendors. “We’re faced with a variety of skills and languages, so standardizing on one solution was very important.” University Research Co.

After reviewing its options, URC established a service agreement with MadWolf To Learn More: Technologies to deploy an EVault hybrid-cloud backup and recovery solution—a EVault Cloud Backup Service hybrid of onsite technology for block replication and reliable offsite backups. With EVault Cloud Service MadWolf’s guidance, URC chose EVault Cloud Backup Service* for cloud-based EVault Express Recovery Appliance backup and recovery; EVault Cloud Disaster Recovery Service, a managed service for recovering data and systems in the Seagate cloud after a disaster; EVault Express EVault System Restore Recovery Appliance, a pre-configured storage appliance that replicates local (onsite) EVault Agent for ® Windows® backups to the Seagate cloud; and, because even the best-protected environments EVault Plug-ins for Microsoft can experience a catastrophic system failure, EVault System Restore for state-of- SQL Server and Exchange the-art “bare metal” recovery. “MadWolf Technologies did a very good job explaining Seagate’s rapid deployment To learn more about capabilities,” says Rokita. “We could have an appliance and technology to back up Seagate hybrid cloud solutions, visit servers onsite very quickly, which was important.” Rokita was further convinced seagate.com/hybrid-cloud. by the EVault Cloud Disaster Recovery Service, which would enable URC to stand up five critical servers within 24 hours, if necessary. Add to this the cost benefits of EVault’s Cloud Backup Service solution, and Rokita and his team were sold. “Putting these attributes together, Seagate was the clear leader; we had made our choice.”

From Deploy to Enjoy “The whole thing went very smoothly,” says Rokita. “From the service provided to us through MadWolf, which included establishing large file servers, to the efficiency with which it was deployed—seven to eight days in total—it was as rapid as promised and a very solid experience overall. Once we tested these servers and data restoration through EVault’s cloud, we knew we had the right solution in place.” Rokita also notes, “In the two years since we began using Seagate, we consider its ability to restore our data whenever needed to be reliable and incredibly easy.” Rokita estimates that URC’s investment with Seagate has freed up a minimum of eight person-hours a month, hours that can be used for other tasks. He also appre- ciates the diminished stress levels. “This is as close to a ‘set it and forget it’ solution as we could have expected,” says Rokita. “Having Cloud Disaster Recovery in place gives us all comfort.” “Due to the nature of our business and the diversity of our field network, we present a number of challenges for the backup and recovery vendor community,” says Rokita. He concludes, “Not every company was able to address all our specific requirements. Given our experience, we’ve recommended Seagate to other organizations in our industry.”

* Formerly named EVault SaaS

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