eMazzanti Technologies, an outsource IT expert in the Hoboken, NJ and NYC areas, realized that Hurricane Irene in 2011 was the practice-run in a year before Hurricane Sandy in 2013. It forced eMazzanti to prepare and think about the kind of readiness its clients expected. When Sandy hit, eMazzanti’s own business was flooded and all of its customer data directly affected as well. However, it rescued itself and its clients via a new eCare Disaster Recovery Solution based on StorageCraft’s ShadowProtect® software. This preparation resulted in eMazzanti’s ability to restore its own operation within hours along with nearly all of its client’s businesses within 72 hours.
Business Needs
eMazzanti Technologies needed a best-in-class disaster recovery/business continuity solution it could offer its business customers in the professional services, educational, manufacturing, technology and retail sales industry segments. In a seven-month period the NE US was pummeled by three major hurricanes that caused approximately $100 billion in damages, along with serious damage to a large variety of businesses.
Solution
Tapping the power of StoreCraft’s Shadow Protect software and eMazzanti’s consulting services, a customized eCare solution was developed which takes frequent, complete, pristine images of all computers, operating systems, applications, services and settings.
The eCare Disaster Recovery Solution allows eMazzanti customers to replicate backup images to the cloud or to a secure offsite location. When disasters strike, the backups can be rapidly launched as virtual machines or mounted to hard drives as needed. Complete customer data restoration can take minutes or hours versus days, weeks—or never.
Benefits
The Right Vendor Helps Ensure the Right Recovery
“StorageCraft® ShadowProtect® was a game changer,” Jennifer Mazzanti, president, explains. “Tapes were a nightmare—unreliable backups, usually managed by a client’s low-level employee, plus the high implementation and maintenance costs of tape backups.”
“In two weeks we were able to convert half of the new company’s customer data [we recently purchased] to StorageCraft,” Carl says. “That includes one customer trying to manage 39 backup tapes a month. Soon 100 percent of our customers will be on ShadowProtect.”
Jennifer says StorageCraft has also helped them improve customer relationships.
“Choosing StorageCraft for business continuity was one of the smartest decisions we’ve made,” she adds. “ShadowProtect is definitely more cost-effective for our clients. Plus, it’s more reliable. We know that it’s working, and we can easily test it and prove to our customers its working. That’s something we can use to maintain a good relationship with our clients.”
Faster Recovery
“Within 72 hours of Sandy, we recovered almost all of our customers, “ noted Carl Mazzanti, CEO. ““We not only kept 100%
of our customer base, we’ve expanded another 50% since Sandy.”
“The recovery was a great StorageCraft performance. We ordered new parts, used StorageCraft to bring systems back up, and with StorageCraft virtualization, we hadcustomers up and running before the new hardware arrived,” Carl says. “StorageCraft saved the day.”
Preparation Means Power
eMazzanti practices what it preaches . It was prepared against its own data loss way ahead of the hurricanes. It gave the IT expert the power to significantly, and rapidly, help its customers.
“Our biggest lesson from Sandy was that it’s just as important to treat our own site as ‘a client.’ We tend to be client-focused in any emergency,” Jennifer says. “At a bare minimum we need to be up and running or we can’t help anyone else. In the days before Sandy hit, every eMazzanti employee was moved to a customer support role, checking backups and making sure clients were as prepared as possible.
