Cloud-based business continuity more than a Vision for specialist manufacturer

M&I Materials, the manufacturer of specialist materials for industry and science, has deployed a cloud-based business continuity system for its mission critical business platforms.

M&I is using Vision Solutions' Double-Take Availability to manage and protect its applications and data. Using Double-Take M&I Materials’ applications and data can be replicated in real time from its production systems.

This provides secondary copies of data from M&I Materials’ Infor Syteline, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint systems, which are hosted across a mix of physical and virtual machines.

In the event of a disaster affecting any of the company’s production servers, the secondary machines can provide up-to-date and running versions of these critical applications, "with little or no impact on the company’s day-to-day business operations", said M&I.

The secondary server images are being replicated at a data centre run by virtualDCS in Leeds.

Jeff Robinson, IT manager at M&I Materials, said, “M&I Materials needed a solution that would dramatically reduce the company’s recovery time and provide a robust business continuity plan following our move to a virtual system."

Robinson said the "biggest sticking point" was finding a system that took into account the firm’s mixed physical and virtual server environment.