Canada Agribusiness Richardson Adopts Simpana

Richardson International, Canada’ privately-owned
agribusiness, has deployed Simpana 9 software from CommVault Systems, Inc.
to increase operational
efficiencies while lowering the administrative overhead required to protect a virtualized server environment encompassing two data centers, eight
remote sites and hundreds of virtual machines.

Richardson International turned to server virtualization
technology six years ago to readily accommodate growth and achieve business
agility in support of its 30 software developers, custom agribusiness
applications and 1,750 employees across Canada. The company realized
that its disparate point products for virtual server protection and remote tape
backups were putting a strain on its 52-person IT department.

In an effort to lower storage and maintenance costs, reduce
administration and increase efficiencies across the board, Richardson
International has centralized disk-based backup and recovery to support its
VMware vSphere environment while alleviating the significant performance and
management problems it experienced with its legacy IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
(TSM) platform. Thanks to Simpana deduplication and backup software, the
company reports that the nightly backup window has been reduced by more than 50
percent.

CommVault’s virtual server protection, including
Virtual Server Agent (VSA) and integration with
VMware‘s vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP), ensures end-to-end protection
of vital corporate data.

The company’s IT environment is 100-percent virtualized and,
by consolidating separate point products for virtual server protection and
remote backup/recovery with CommVault’s singular platform approach to modern
data management, Richardson International can now support its developers and
end users faster, easier and more efficiently.

Richardson International projects a nine-month ROI on its
Simpana software deployment, especially given the additional features and
functionality that can be leveraged from CommVault’s modern data management
approach and the significantly reduced administrative time for managing daily
backup/recovery operations.

Harvesting a Bumper Crop of Simpana Software Benefits 

According to Richardson International, CommVault’s capacity
licensing model and integrated capabilities enable the team to focus on more
innovative ways to manage and protect critical data in supporting their
thriving business instead of worrying about performing cost analyses to justify
each new data protection add, expansion and upgrade.

Simpana software’s centralized management provides a single
pane of glass to manage local and remote data backups and restores; full VM
image and granular file recoveries ensure the highest levels of virtual server
protection.

Richardson International replaced IBM TSM and SyncSort with
Simpana software and now is evaluating CommVault’s Edge Data Protection
solution to eliminate CrashPlan as part of additional consolidation with
Simpana software.

Paul Beaudry, Assistant Vice President of Technical
Services, Management Information Services for Richardson International, said: "With CommVault Simpana software, we’ve been able to
migrate off three disparate point products and consolidate all our data
protection requirements on a singular platform that delivers end-to-end
protection of our entire environment. The result is a more efficient, inter operable and easier method for managing and protecting vital data.

"We have probably freed the equivalent of a full-time
staffer as Simpana’s single pane of glass management makes it easy to perform
both backups and recoveries of our entire environment. We appreciate having the
flexibility to conduct LAN-free backups along with full VM image or granular
file recoveries, which ensures the highest levels of virtual server
protection.
"With hundreds of potential backup sources, CommVault’s
capacity licensing model works great for us. Now the team can focus on what
needs protection without worrying about the economics. This approach helps us
make better decisions without worrying about performing individual cost
analyses every time we want to expand our capabilities.
"We expect to achieve a return on our Simpana software
investment in approximately nine months, especially with so many additional
features that we can continue to benefit from."