CACI is a payment-protection insurer distributing insurance solutions in 14 countries under the freedom of services structure – part of the French Credit Agricole Group. The company has 57 people, comprising eleven nationalities, working in Dublin.
Headquartered in Paris and Lille, CACI has three representative offices in Milan, Frankfurt and Madrid – all of which are dependent on the Irish IT infrastructure. CACI has implemented a disaster recovery (DR) solution and managed service solution to reduce business risk, deliver high availability and be better prepared for DR.
Rapidly expanding business
“Our business has been expanding rapidly over the last number of years and data is crucial for the running of the business particularly portfolio information, statistics and reporting information,” explains Mary Ryan, IT Manager at CACI.
“With representative offices in Milan, Frankfurt and Madrid, a corporate-wide disaster recovery/business continuity plan was required. We needed a solution in place so that if some kind of interruption or disaster occurred, we could get back to work as quickly as possible,” Ryan adds.
CACI’s managed service provider Trilogy Technologies, which has provided ICT support to CACI for the past seven years and operates as its trusted IT adviser, recommended Savenet Solutions as a DR provider.
Trilogy Technologies partnered with Savenet Solutions to set up the DR service, providing the necessary security access and knowledge transfer to ensure the critical servers and data integrity were in place for CACI.
Trilogy Technologies continues to work with Savenet on an ongoing basis, advising on any updates or changes to the CACI environment to ensure these changes are replicated at the DR site.
Savenet Solutions worked with the company to integrate its cloud DR service which gives remote access to clients’ programmes, servers and data. Savenet’s online backup software allows backup of all CACIs’ servers on a daily basis to their virtual DR environment in a remote data centre using their existing internet connection. Savenet then rebuilds virtual servers to the same specification as CACI’s live servers. CACI can then access these virtual DR servers through a secure VPN connection in the event of a disaster.
Savenet also installed an onsite business continuity appliance, which facilitates the fast restore of one or more servers due to a hardware failure onsite. CACI personnel can connect securely from anywhere once they have access to a PC and internet connection.
“We now have real-time online replication with regard to our email and applications and this allows us to respond quickly in the event of any failure or disaster. If our systems go down, I have the security of knowing that switching to our virtual environment will allow users experience minimum disruption times,” Ryan explains.
The next phase for CACI is to further virtualise their live environment which will give them added power in reduced space. As part of Savenet Solutions’ ongoing development of the DR service, the company plans to move CACI over to a more high- availability solution within the next three months. This solution will reduce their recovery time from eight to 12 hours to two to three hours. The new solution will also reduce their recovery point from the previous night to within the last hour before the disaster.
“Accessibility, reliability and availability of information is paramount to success in our business. The disaster recovery and managed service solution has given us a highly flexible solution that we can easily grow when it’s needed. It also gives me peace of mind knowing our data and applications are in safe hands,” says Ryan. “Trilogy Technologies has brought together this state-of-the-art IT solution to meet our business requirements and those of our customers, now and into the future,” she concludes.
“Trilogy Technologies’ commitment and expertise to us is a key factor in the on-going relationship.”
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