IDC Opinion – Backup Technology Asigra Implementation for Master Lock
Master Lock Latches on to the Asigra based Backup Technology Backup Solution, Achieves Shorter Recovery, More Reliable eDiscovery and Storage Efficiency Savings
As markets get more competitive, organizations have increasingly become process and efficiency focused. Firms today make a clear distinction between business process that have a direct impact on the customer or the business from those processes that serve as a means in delivering value to their end customers. Hence, firms are looking for ways to minimize effort on processes that don’t directly add value to its core offering. The backup process is undoubtedly one such process.
Backup and data protection processes have increased in priority with the recent growth in data and regulations. Organizations today are looking for backup solution rather than products, and have a propensity for solutions that satisfy their broader backup life cycle managements (including data recovery) needs. This presents the opportunity for backup vendors and service providers to extend the scope of their role in their customer’s broader data management process. Below are some of key considerations in planning and delivering a backup solution:
- Service vs. Product approach: While some businesses choose to adopt backup as a service to leverage a service provider’s infrastructure and resources, many also choose the service approach simply because the complexity and rich functionality of the technology in modern backup products has placed increased overhead on internal IT staff. Thus the decision to use backup as a service or as product that is easily accessible to its customers, needs to be made early on in the product planning process.
- Backup modernization and archiving: As backup products invade into the feature list of archiving products, the new capabilities of backup software does not guarantee a higher price point or purchase. Many businesses are still satisfied with using backup as a means to fulfill their archiving needs. Hence there has to be a considerable price (or feature) advantage compared to an standalone archiving solution in order to appeal to the traditional backup only customer.
IN THIS BUYER CASE STUDY
This IDC Buyer Case Study accesses the deployment of the Asigra agent-less online backup and recovery solution at Master Lock (www.masterlock.com), a security product company and one of the worlds largest manufacturer and marketer of padlocks. Master Lock contracted with Backup Technology’s for a subscription-based service for Backup Technology Secure Backup. Backup Technologys is an Asigra channel partner and provides an online backup service to Master Lock using Asigra’s backup software platform. In this study, IDC examines the effectiveness of the solution and service in meeting the buyer’s needs, as well as reasons out why the Asigra-based Backup Technology Secure Backup solution turned out to be Master Lock’s top choice to meet its backup requirements.
IDC spoke to the Director of Infrastructure and Systems at Master Lock, to gain first hand understanding of the implementation of the online backup solution and Master Lock’s post implementation experience with the Asigra-based Backup Technology Secure Backup solution.
SITUATION OVERVIEW
Organization Overview
Master Lock, headquartered in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, is part of the Home and Hardware group of the larger Fortune Brands conglomerate which consists of a number of well known consumer hardware brands such as Moen and Master Brand Cabinets. Master Lock was formed in 1921 and is one of the most well recognized and enduring brands in the country today. Though it is a medium sized company it is well distributed globally. Master Lock’s manufacturing operations are spread across Milwaukee, Missouri, Mexico and Canada and has presence in international locations such as China and France which totals to 10 locations worldwide.
Information Technology Overview
Master Lock currently has about 1,000 desktops distributed worldwide and has about 50 servers. Its Oak Creek, Wisconsin location has close to 3.5 TB in network drive storage and each of the remaining 9 worldwide locations have about 100 GB to 200 GB of data. Master Lock in its early years centralized most of the systems such as its ERP system, email system and its corporate communications system which was hosted in its Oak Creek location. However, over the past 5 years, as part of its efforts to mitigate risks and to improve IT resource utilization, Master Lock has been selectively decentralizing and moving some of systems out of its data centers. As an example, Master Lock has switched to a hosted ERP solution which gives them access to a better infrastructure and protection than before. Similarly Master Lock is in the process of decentralizing its warehouse management system and its web server infrastructure to remote secure locations.
Challenges and Solution
Though Master Lock has been moving towards decentralization in the case of many of its important systems such as its ERP systems, it has done so very selectively. It still maintains on premise in the data center systems that hold information that is critical to its business (email and CAD engineering systems) which contribute to a large amount of data that needs to be safely and reliably backed up regularly.
The traditional tape based backup system that Master lock used stretched existing IT resources following an operational merger within the Fortune Brands Home and Hardware division. Master Lock IT staff had to spend significant amount of time running the backup on premise and shipping the tapes to the offsite archives.
With the number of servers and data to be managed having effectively doubled within a short span of time, Master Lock IT Staff were spread thin and were starting to have trouble keeping up with their backup cycles. Disaster recovery scenarios were tougher to handle as it almost consumed a whole day to restore and test Master Lock’s systems. Similarly, managing and securely retaining data was done using tapes and the process was highly manual. Master Lock wanted to change this process and switch to a more reliable system that was less taxing on its IT resources.
Choosing the Solution
Given the challenges that Master Lock was facing, it evaluated a number of solutions to meet its growing backup requirements while reducing the burden on its IT management resources. Based on the objectives that Master Lock sought to achieve, the Asigra-based Backup Technology Secure Backup solution turned out to be the most suitable solution. One of the key features that appealed to Master Lock was its ability to perform bare metal restores which guaranteed Master Lock the ability to restore in minutes an entire server configuration to dissimilar hardware and its data in an emergency disaster recovery scenario. In such emergency situations the feature would allow Master Lock’s administrators to quickly recover the complete system on to a new hardware without having to manually reinstall the OS or configure the hardware. Lastly, the Asigra-based Backup Technology Secure Backup solution was also flexible enough to support backup of both Windows and Linux systems which Master Lock was using.
Master Lock selected the solution in mid 2009 and initially planned to implement the solution on-premise, but the company quickly realized that it would be more beneficial from an IT stand point to consume it as a service from an online backup service provider. Master Lock evaluated the training, resources and costs for managing it themselves versus procuring a service and letting a third party manage their backups and backup infrastructure. Master Lock decided to leverage the expertise and IT resources of Asigra’s channel partner, Backup Technologys. Before procuring the service, Master Lock requested a disaster recovery (DR) test be conducted with Backup Technology Secure Backup. The test comprised 4 different Master Lock servers and the recovery for those servers was able to be completed in 1/2 of the time as previous Master Lock approaches using tape. The ability for Master Lock to reduce the restore times by up to 50% was a key proof point in their decision to move forward with the solution.
Solution implementation
Master Lock has currently implemented the Backup Technology Secure Backup solution for its HQ location at Oak Creek, Milwaukee which houses the majority of its non-ERP based data. Master Lock has implemented the solution for several of its other locations as well. The company also plans to implement the solution in all of its remaining global locations in the near future. The data that Master Lock currently backs up to Backup Technology’s datacenter (based in Dallas, Texas) includes email, user data, CAD files and data from business systems that reside on network drives. The Company also recently upgraded its corporate internet port to a higher 10 MB bandwidth that better supports the online backup process. However, no other upgrades are planned at any of the other locations.
Master Lock has chosen an Asigra configuration where they have local (on premise) operational recovery as well as remote disaster recovery. Master Lock has an Asigra DS client system on premise which enables them to recover data locally as well as a DS-server off premise in the Backup Technology data center to achieve disaster recovery. As the service provider, Backup Technology has full access to the DS-client and DS-server and is thus able to control, monitor and manage backups and recoveries for Master Lock’s servers.
Results
Master Lock has been highly satisfied with the Asigra-based Backup Technology Secure Backup solution since it first tested and deployed the solution in Q3 2009 and as a result it even plans to deepen the relation with its service provider. Below are some of the benefits that Master Lock was able to realize within the short period after implementation.
Shortened DR Time:
The most direct benefit for Master Lock has been its ability to cut restore time by half compared to the time taken with its previous backup product. Earlier a DR operation would engage Master Lock’s IT staff for a whole day between 8 am to 5 pm compared to 3 hrs of time that it takes today to completely restore and test the system.
Data Management & E-discovery
Master Lock is today able to more effectively and elegantly manage data by selectively purging data in its data stores using the policy based data management capability that the solution offers. Master Lock wanted to support the corporate file retention program Snapshots of the system are stored in the BLM (Back-up life cycle management) near line archive and is later shredded upon receiving the go ahead to destroy. This allowed Master Lock to meet its preservation obligations where data could be quarantined and saved.
Better Storage and Network Utilization
The Asigra solution today has not only relieved the pressure on Master lock’s IT staff but has also enabled it to better utilize its IT infrastructure with its de-duplication and compression capability. Master Lock achieves approximately 70% compression on its data and as a result is able to protect much more data than earlier. Since the data optimization is done at the client side it also lowers the overhead on its network which comes as an added indirect benefit to Master Lock.
Based on the experience that Master Lock has had with the Asigra software, and Backup Technology’s technical expertise in handling its back up process, it is exploring the possibilities of relinquishing more control to Backup Technology so that it can concentrate more on its core business rather than worry about its IT backend. Master Lock is considering letting Backup Technology house its data in a secure location such that Backup Technology would also be in charge of the restoration process in addition to the backup process.
ESSENTIAL GUIDANCE
The trend towards backup modernization indicates the rising need for organization to stay in control of their backup data not only to meet their recovery needs but also to meet regulatory and legal needs. With increasing dependence on electronically stored data for day to day operations, speed and ease with which data can be identified, produced and restored has risen in importance even in organizations such as Master Lock that is not heavily regulated. Below are some of the items to be aware of before deciding on a backup modernization solution and its implementation.
ROI on Backup modernization: Being tied to the cost center backup modernization projects may not yield direct or immediate ROI in most cases and is difficult to quantify. The new capability gives a higher degree of protection and assurance to Master Lock that yields long term benefits resulting from risk mitigation. Thus IT decisions makers need to make sure that they factor in and prioritize these intangible benefits in addition to direct monitory benefits before making the purchase decision.
Choosing the right provider: It is Master Lock’s strong advice to identify the right provider early on which can make the all the difference between the solution being useful to it being counterproductive.
Careful evaluation of opportunity costs: Advancements in IT infrastructure and technology has changed the economics of purchasing a solution as software vs. services. The choice between the two will have to be made after careful evaluation of tradeoffs related to requirements specific to an organization’s security requirements, available IT staff/talent, IT infrastructure, required service levels etc. Master Lock for example initially planned to host the backup on-premise, however upon in-depth evaluation of its current IT capabilities and careful analysis of the benefits of hosting its backup on-premise vs. consuming it as a service (mostly from an IT resource stand point), Master Lock choose the service model over an on-premise implementation.
Adequate bandwidth: One recommendation or lesson learned from Master Lock would be to adequately size the network bandwidth required based upon the amount of data you have and the net new or changed data being created daily. Addressing the capacity requirements for a first backup can be done with a seeding unit, however, you want to be sure you have enough network capacity to handle the ongoing backups.
