IT downtime is estimated to cost companies an average of $300,000 per hour. The huge cost of this downtime is driving companies to implement backup and replication services as part of their business continuity plan. Hipskind Technology Solutions Group, a U.S. Midwestern IT solutions provider, has combined its backup and replication cloud service– EquaSafe – with Certeon’s aCelera for replication and backup optimization to create the most flexible, secure and easily deployable replication and backup service in the cloud.
For many of Hipskind’s customers, creating a self-managed, offsite backup facility was not an option; yet the threat of unplanned downtime made replicating their data a necessity. Hipskind’s EquaSafe cloud service offering is designed specifically for companies using Dell EqualLogic. These customers gain backup and replication without the capital expense of building and managing their own infrastructure with near-instant implementation. However, many of Hipskind’s customers and prospects have inadequate network bandwidth to connect to the EquaSafe service, meaning they would not be able to replicate daily changes. With Certeon’s aCelera, Hipskind dramatically improved its customers’ ability to replicate all daily changes with the aCelera virtual appliances which are optimized for EqualLogic replication and backup.
“By combing Certeon’s aCelera virtual appliances for EqualLogic replication and backup optimization with our EquaSafe cloud service , we’ve provided our customers with a simple and fast way to rollout backup and replication ,” said Wally Lang, general manager, Hipskind. “Before implementing aCelera, only 40 to 50 percent of our potential customers could use our EquaSafe service because of their slow network connections. Certeon’s aCelera helped optimize these network connections so effectively between customers’ primary data center and our secondary, disaster recovery site, that more than 90 percent of the potential market is now able to employ our cloud services.”
The Hipskind cloud infrastructure is entirely virtualized, making it essential that their replication optimization solution be packaged in whatever form their customer required, so it is able to run in any environment – physical or virtual. What’s more, Certeon’s aCelera does not force customers to make the substantial investments in additional infrastructure, as is the case with other hardware WAN optimization solutions because aCelera can be licensed using a subscription model. This makes aCelera affordable for Hipskind’s customers with better flexibility as compared with any competitive optimization solution on the market today.
“ The value of Certeon’s aCelera product is dramatically higher – no other solution is even in the same league when it comes to price and performance, especially in the cloud,” continued Lang. “Since the product can be packaged as a physical appliance, virtual appliance or Windows software and there’s no additional hardware charge for the customer, we’re easily able to package it with EquaSafe to make it more widely available. Currently, every single EquaSafe customer we have uses aCelera. Not only does it ensure that our customers’ replications are completed on schedule over a secure and now speedy network connection, but it also ensures that our cloud infrastructure, network and systems are robust enough to handle the number of customers we intend it to. Without aCelera, that would not be the case.”
“aCelera is specifically designed to optimize Dell EqualLogic iSCSI storage and virtualized infrastructure, so it was a natural fit with Hipskind’s EquaSafe cloud service. Together, we provide next generation cloud backup and replication services for any Hipskind customer,” said Peter Dougherty, CEO and co-founder of Certeon. “Every successful business continuity strategy is measured by the time to backup, replicate or restore. As increasing amounts of data threaten to overwhelm WAN resources, organizations must ensure they’re selecting secure solutions that help alleviate unplanned downtime by slashing backup and replication and recovery times effortlessly. Also, because Certeon offers the most mature and efficient virtual appliances for optimization, aCelera can support a higher data throughput using the same hardware appliance versus the competition so this efficiency lowers the cloud providers CapEx costs to offer this service. Essentially, the EquaSafe service, in combination with aCelera, has created a next generation replication and backup cloud solution, and we’re very pleased with the success Hipskind and its customers have seen so far.”