Case Study: Draft
Solution OverviewCustomer ProfileDraft began as an in-house marketing department at Bankers Life & Casualty. In 1978, it became an independent agency, and today is a world leader in advertising and direct marketing. Draft has 60 offices in 29 countries worldwide and billings in excess of $3.6 million. Business SituationDraft needed a storage and data replication solution to eliminate downtime and data loss. SolutionDraft is deploying Windows Powered NAS with Double-Take software in 35 branches across the United States. Benefits
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Company Overview
Draft, a part of the Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG), is one of the world's premier global marketing agencies. In 2002, Ad Age and AdWeek recognized it as the #1 direct marketing agency in the U.S—the company is ranked 17th in the world and as the top promotional marketing agency in the U.S. From targeted promotions to national campaigns to entertainment and sports programs to corporate partnerships, Draft has more than 25 years of experience creating solutions that motivate customers to act. Services include general advertising; direct, promotional, digital, guerilla, and interactive marketing; fulfillment and game execution; database technology; promotional premiums; and more.
Business Challenge
When Draft integrated with two of its subsidiaries in 2001 and brought 60 additional offices online, IT problems abounded. Disparate systems for accounting, client data, and messaging meant numerous outages and file corruptions. As often as twice a month, system failures or lost data disrupted business operations. Outages compromised efficiency and forced users to find alternatives to electronic communication. Problems like restoring the Exchange server could take anywhere from half a day to 48 hours, especially if the database was corrupted. Draft's need for data protection and high availability was growing exponentially.
Compounding Draft's difficulties was the fact that the IT team was often fatigued. "A restore might force a network engineer to work until 2 AM," explains Julian Morris, Senior Vice President, Director of Information Technology for Draft. "Routine maintenance also had to take place late at night, after several days of advance notice, simply to avoid business disruption." Network Engineers were exhausted and morale suffered as a result.
Solution
The basis for Draft's success is exceptional talent and superior service. To maintain its level of success, Draft must continue to provide an unfailing ability to communicate whenever necessary—when creativity allows, when clients demand, when deadlines loom—24x7!
To alleviate system failures, corrupt files, data loses, and staff burn-out, Draft evaluated several high availability options for data protection and disaster recovery solutions—expense, however, became a key criterion in the company's final decision. Replacing its current mission-critical servers with clustered hardware would have been costly and raised the possibility that if anything failed, the entire system would be unavailable—not a good choice when high availability is the goal. Storage Area Networks (SAN) didn't meet the immediate need either, but did offer a long-term solution—again at a prohibitive price.
Draft selected Microsoft Windows Powered Network Attached Storage (NAS) with NSI Software's Double-Take replication technology as the solution that would meet all of Draft's criteria for cost, functionality, and availability. The easy-to-deploy NAS can failover several file servers, offering a cost effective, fault-tolerant, many-to-one solution. And because the NAS device uses an optimized version of the Windows operating system, it makes an excellent replication target server that seamlessly integrated into Draft's existing Windows environment. As a result, with a minimal hardware investment, Draft has a powerful backup solution for multiple production servers. NSI Software's replication technology, Double-Take, provides continual real-time backup and automatic failover capabilities.
"This is an industry where success hinges on creativity and quick reaction," says Morris. "Every minute down means lost productivity and lost opportunity." Unfailing communication on demand is vital for Draft's competitive advantage, and the combined Windows Powered NAS and Double-Take solution is helping Draft maintain that advantage by virtually eliminating downtime and data loss.
Thirty-five branches across the United States, and a total of 635 users, connect to Draft's Headquarters-in Chicago through a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Draft already has deployed 25 licenses in an enterprise with 60 production servers and 7 replication target servers. Enterprise application servers like databases, e-mail, and timesheets, replicate to Windows 2000 servers, and data servers backup to Windows Powered NAS devices. To help ensure uptime, Draft has two NAS units on two separate floors in one building in Chicago to provide high availability for each other.
Business Benefits
Rapid Development
Windows Powered NAS simplified Draft's selection of hardware. The easy-to-deploy NAS can failover several file servers, offering a cost effective, fault-tolerant, many-to-one solution. Because Double-Take runs on existing server and storage platforms it facilitated rapid deployment and required no purchase of new hardware.
24x7 Availability
Draft became a leader in advertising and direct marketing by delivering talent, superior skill, and service. With three main offices in Chicago and NY, branches throughout the world, and a team that works around the clock to deliver quality to its clients, their workday defies routine business hours. Draft relies on sophisticated technology and a dedicated team of IT professionals to ensure its systems are working 24x7.
Routine maintenance used to force hours of downtime and business disruption. At best, network engineers accomplished updates in the wee hours of the night. Unplanned outages didn't afford that late-night alternative and often resulted in costly losses of data, communication, and productivity. But Windows Powered NAS with Double-Take's patented replication technology is giving Draft the high-availability it required—no longer do unplanned outages tax personnel and result in losses of data, communications, or productivity. Replicating changes as they occur at the byte level ensures that changed data can be protected nearly immediately, and that an up-to-date replica can be made available instantly, if necessary. Replicating data from one to more source servers to one or more Windows Powered NAS target provides Draft with failover capabilities that ensure business can be resumed rapidly after a disaster or system outage.
Cost Savings
Windows Powered NAS enables IT administrators to easily manage growing amounts of data while reducing storage costs—it's one of the lowest costs per gigabyte solutions available. And Draft can take advantage of high scalability to expand storage capacity as needed. Advanced availability features, ease of deployment and management, and seamless integration also combine to lower the total cost of ownership. Because NSI Software's Double-Take runs on an existing server and storage platform, it minimizes capital expenses associated with purchasing new hardware to support its data replication technology.
Optimized Platform for Performance and Stability
Double-Take is the only host-based software replication product to achieve Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server and Datacenter certification, which ensures Draft that Double-Take will deliver superior levels of availability, reliability, and supportability.
