In today’s digital marketplace, customer expectations have skyrocketed. A small window of digital downtime can mean losses in productivity, sales and public image. For that reason, every organization needs a robust disaster recovery plan.
Our client, a major statutory board in Singapore, needed to outsource their Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery program to a reputed services provider who could manage their IBM mainframes environment. This environment comprises critical apps that the company uses to generate data and require low RTO (the maximum length of time it should take to restore normal operations following an outage or data loss) and RPO (the maximum amount of data the organization can tolerate losing).
Pain points
Firstly, many enterprises and statutory boards depend on IBM mainframes for secure, reliable and heavy-volume data processing. As many in the industry are aware, managing the infrastructure of IBM mainframes is complex and require the necessary expertise, skills and investment in enterprise storage, network and systems security – something that not every IT service provider is equipped to do.
Secondly, service providers are also required to have a stellar track record of managing similar IBM
mainframes environments for government institutions and the financial services sector. Without such credentials, the client would not be confident that stringent compliance requirements would be met.
Thirdly, the client requires a service provider who is adept in managing all aspects of BCP, including DR
consultancy and Work Area Recovery facilities, data centre hosting and the skilled consultants and engineers to monitor and manage the environment.
Fourthly, the client was looking to phase out most of their refurbished equipment and wanted to move its IT capital expenditure to a subscription service.
Solution
After a competitive public tender exercise, Acclivis was awarded a 5 year contract by the statutory board and appointed as the BCP and Disaster Recovery provider.
Acclivis successfully ran, operated and supported the statutory board’s mainframe platform – from
monitoring and remote infrastructure management to full-service management, including hosting, storage and disaster recovery.
This platform is managed by Acclivis’ engineers and DR consultants who are certified by the Disaster Recovery International and Business Institute, a world-class body that helps organizations around the world prepare for and recover from disasters and implemented within the tight timeline stipulated by the client.
As part of the project management, we relocated our client’s existing disaster recovery facilities to a Tier 3 data centres with high powered racks to host all their servers, storage, network and backup equipment, using our Pacific Internet connectivity to replicate links. We also solutioned the equipment of existing IT infrastructure to be both modern and resilient.
Acclivis also managed the client’s disaster recovery site by putting in place Work Area Recovery (WAR) facilities and technical support for disaster activation.
The whole project was also delivered at a fraction of the cost from that of our client’s previous IT services provider while adhering to the RTO and RPO set by the client.
By outsourcing its disaster recovery to Acclivis, our client now has a peace of mind knowing that Acclivis
has the people, expertise and facilities to protect their mission-critical data. This in turns helps our client to singularly focus on their mission to enhance the welfare of Singaporeans and protect their public image.
