Published on 25-Oct-2011
"“We now know we’re taking reliable backups of our data, wherever it’s located. As a rapidly growing and fast-paced business, that gives us tremendous peace of mind.”" - Nathan Sharp, IT Infrastructure Manager, Fairbrother
Customer:
Fairbrother
Industry:
Construction / Architecture / Engineering
Deployment country:
Australia
Solution:
System Storage Proven
IBM Business Partner:
ISW
Overview
Founded in Tasmania in 1973, Fairbrother has steadily grown to encompass a diverse group of business units delivering construction, joinery and air conditioning services – as well as development, facilities management and other corporate services.
Business need:
Construction and building services group Fairbrother was struggling to execute distributed data backup and recovery processes across its nine offices. Lack of regular tape changing at remote sites, data volumes exceeding tape size and a concern about tape reliability prompted them to seek a more effective business continuity solution.
Solution:
Fairbrother asked its technology partner ISW, an IBM® Premier Business Partner*, to help it create a new backup and data recovery strategy. ISW developed a solution based on the IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager FastBack Center suite of applications which automates backup and recovery processes and consolidates the protection of data in remote and branch offices.
Benefits:
Fairbrother has reduced the cost of support and increased both the productivity of its IT staff and business users. The ongoing business costs of data backup and recovery are also much
lower. But, most importantly, its new data backup and recovery solution has greatly enhanced the organisation’s business continuity capabilities, with resultant peace of mind.
Case Study
Founded in Tasmania in 1973, Fairbrother has steadily grown to encompass a diverse group of business units delivering construction, joinery and air conditioning services – as well as development, facilities management and other corporate services. Recognised as an Employer of Choice for over 530 people, Fairbrother sees the continual skill development of its workforce as a key competitive advantage. Lasting client relationships and cohesive business partnerships, an unwavering focus on quality and safety, and a commitment to innovation and continuous improvement have enabled Fairbrother to build a solid reputation and a respected brand.
The Business Problem
Fairbrother has nine offices distributed across Tasmania and Bendigo in Victoria, which presented a challenge in executing a reliable data backup and recovery service. Data backup and recovery were managed remotely, and the issue was further complicated by the lack of local
skilled IT resources in the branch offices and the fact that the amount of data had exceeded tape size. Nathan Sharp, Fairbrother’s IT
Infrastructure Manager, says that he was also concerned that tape backup was unreliable. “We needed to review and redesign our entire data backup and recovery strategy and introduce automation, both to reduce the day-today effort involved and to give us the confidence we could effectively restore data fast, should the need arise.”
Solution – IBM and ISW
Fairbrother has an ongoing relationship with IBM Premier Business Partner* ISW, and Nathan called them in to help design and implement a new solution. ISW proposed IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack Center – a convenient suite of applications that includes Tivoli Storage
Manager FastBack, Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Bare Machine Recovery and Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Microsoft® Exchange®.
FastBack is a centralised disk backup solution providing comprehensive data protection and recovery for critical Windows® and Linux® servers – including the power to quickly recover any Microsoft® Windows® or Linux® server data, anywhere in the organisation, from any point in time. Because it automates and consolidates the protection of data in remote and branch offices, it offered the perfect solution for Fairbrother’s distributed operations. Nathan is especially impressed by FastBack’s data protection and disaster recovery capabilities. “We are now confident of recovering a single file or an entire volume should the need arise.”
Business Benefits
For Nathan and his team, recovery of files from backup has progressed from a troublesome, error prone activity to a fast and reliable process enabling simple, and efficient recovery of files. This has reduced the cost of support and increased both the productivity of
IT staff and the business users. The ongoing business costs of data backup and recovery are also much lower. Centralised backup has reduced the need for tape backup equipment maintenance and tape holdings at each site.
But most importantly, Fairbrother has greatly enhanced its business continuity capabilities. Nathan Sharp says, “We now know we’re taking
reliable backups of our data, wherever it’s located. As a rapidly growing and fast-paced business, that gives us tremendous peace of mind.”
About ISW
ISW is an Australian IBM Premier Business Partner* providing end-to end technology solutions across the full IBM software and infrastructure portfolio. Fully certified within the brands of Tivoli, Lotus®, WebSphere®, Rational®, Information Management and Business Analytics, ISW is able to take on a variety of projects within any industry and provide successful outcomes driven by our breadth of experience and depth of expert knowledge.
www.isw.com.au
For further information from IBM
If you would like to speak with an IBM Sales representative please call 132 426 (in Australia) or 0800 801 800 (in New Zealand) or visit us at: ibm.com/au
ibm.com/nz
For further information on ISW
If you would like to speak with someone from ISW please call 1800 456 001
For further information on Fairbrother
Visit www.fairbrother.com.au
Products and services used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Software:
Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack
Legal Information
© 2011 IBM Australia Limited ABN 79 000 024 733 All Rights reserved © Copyright IBM Corporation 2011 IBM Australia 55 Coonara Avenue West Pennant Hills NSW 2125 Printed in AustraliaIBM, the IBM Business Partner logo, Tivoli, Lotus, Rational and WebSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm. com/legal/copytrade.shtml. Microsoft, Windows and Exchange are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product and services names may be trademarks or services marks of others. References in this publication to IBM products and services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates. This customer story is based on information provided by Fairbrother and ISW and illustrates how one organisation uses IBM products. Many factors have contributed to the results and benefits described. IBM does not guarantee comparable results elsewhere. IBM is not in a position to verify the accuracy of the information or any claims made by third parties. Warranty, service and support of non-IBM products are provided directly to you by the manufacturer, supplier and publisher of the product. Subject to any rights which may not be excluded or limited, IBM makes no representations or warranties regarding non-IBM products or services. * Business Partner is used informally and does not imply a legal partnership.