Jaz® gets Spicy!
Condiment manufacturer installs new backup system based on Iomega's Jaz® drive
While most small businesses understand the need to protect their computer data, in reality their backup procedures often fall short of their real needs. Unfortunately, this is something that most companies do not realize until it is too late!
Australian condiment manufacturer, Three Threes Condiments Pty Ltd, is one such company. Although a backup procedure had been in place at the company for several years, it took a major computing incident for Three Threes to realize that their system was inadequate.
Three Threes Condiments is one of Australia's largest condiments manufacturers and employs more than 30 people in their Sydney office. As the company sells directly to leading retailers such as Woolworths, Franklins and Coles, as well as a range of smaller outlets across the country, it depends on having reliable access to the information stored on its computer network.
After the company's master computer was stolen in an office burglary in August of 1997, Three Threes' Administration Manager, Sharyn McAlpine, tried to restore the financial data from her backup system. It was only then that she realised the backups she had thought were protecting her system had not been successful and she had in fact lost several weeks worth of data.
"When I went to our backup disks to try and retrieve the data, I found that what we had been doing was inadequate and didn't work at all - there simply wasn't anything on them," said Ms. McAlpine. "It may have been a lack of training or knowledge on my part, but when I came into the job there was no documentation relating to our company's backup systems. I thought I was backing up everything - I was definitely putting the time into doing it, but when it came down to it, what we were doing was just not enough."
Three Threes' previous data backup procedure was quite a complicated and tedious system which required Ms. McAlpine to sit in front of the computer screen and feed in a series of floppy disks in response to the relevant prompts. The information which needed to be backed up was generally enough to fill several floppies, and would take around ten minutes every night.
The other aspect of the company's backup procedure was a monthly full system backup to traditional tape drives. Although their last full backup had been about three weeks earlier, it was this backup that the company had to revert to and from which they restored the majority of their data.
However, Wayne Carruthers of Technology Management Australia (TMA) - the consultancy called in to help restore Three Threes' computing system - felt that such an approach posed some major concerns.
"The problem with this particular system was not only the slowness and clumsiness of the backup, but also all the additional procedures you had to go through to restore data," he said. "There were a number of different backups which had to be tested in the company's new software, and each time you restored from a tape drive it would take around fifteen or twenty minutes. Newer tools such as Iomega's Jaz drive can do the same thing in less than two."
Mr. Carruthers was called in to Three Threes to go through all the company's backup and computing procedures and recommend a new approach. The company had learned from its mistakes, and was keen to implement a system that was quick, efficient and reliable.
"My main requirements for the new system were that I didn't want to be sitting around waiting for the backup each day - it had to be quick, and able to hold all the information we needed in a convenient way," said Ms. McAlpine. "Obviously, after our last experience, reliability was also crucial - I didn't want disks corrupting or collapsing on me and I needed to be assured that if something were to happen, we wouldn't have any problems restoring the information."
Three Threes now uses a one gigabyte Iomega® Jaz® drive to do a daily backup on all of the company's data files.
"With our new system I simply put a Jaz disk into the drive, double click on the daily backup icon and then go about my business," said Ms. McAlpine. "As we accumulate additional accounting information, the size of these files grows, but we are still able to do an entire backup onto one disk in less than ten minutes. The beauty of it is that once the backup has started, it is entirely automated and I don't have to be sitting at my computer, switching disks and watching it the whole time.
In his assessment of Three Threes' situation, Mr. Carruthers put forward a number of alternatives. However, it was the Jaz solutions' flexibility and ease of use that Ms. McAlpine found most attractive.
"Having the capacity and speed of the Jaz drive really gives our business continuity - even if I encounter a problem, I know I can rectify it without any disruption to the rest of the company's workflow," she said.
In recommending the Jaz drive, Mr. Carruthers felt that the product's versatility was also a key consideration.
"While the Jaz solution is fairly similar to other backup methods in that it gives the customer multiple copies of their data, the beauty of Jaz is that it can also be used for other applications," he said. "For instance, Jaz disks offer an ideal method for companies to share and transfer large quantities of information. So when tax season comes around, all that a company needs to do is to save its accounting records onto a Jaz disk and take it to their accountant."
As part of its backup strategy, the company rotates a number of Jaz disks, storing the most recent in a fire and heatproof box in the company's safe, while the others are stored off-site for additional security. This approach also enables the company to meet insurance requirements - an implication which most small businesses neglect to address.
While the company has not had to do any emergency restores since implementing its new backup system, there had been one occasion where the information on the Jaz disk was used to remedy a small computing glitch.
"I have recently had a new Sybiz accounting system installed, and had a consultant customize the program to suit my needs," said Ms. McAlpine. "During the initial stages - when we were still experimenting with the best way to set up the program - we actually installed an option which didn't really meet my needs. The easiest way to make things flow better was to go back to the previous setup and restore the program from the Jaz drive. This enabled us to rectify the problem, and also reassured me that our new backup procedure worked perfectly."
For Three Threes, having a reliable computing system is central to the company's operating procedures. For instance, invoices are despatched with every order that leaves the company, and it is crucial that neither suppliers nor customers needed to wait due to computer problems or a lack of accounting support. Knowing that the system can be reliably restored if there is a problem is a huge relief for Ms. McAlpine.
"From my perspective, if the accounting system falls apart, there is not much you can do," she said. "Without it, I wouldn't know how the business is going, or what is happening on the balance sheet, so I really depend on the reliability of my system. Our business is just too complicated to be doing them manually, so its reassuring to know that if we do have a problem, we can always resort to the backup on the Jaz disks.
"We have really learnt from our mistakes," she said. "While some people may think we've gone over the top, I know exactly what it is like to lose all that information, and am happy to lean toward a safe option like Jaz to know we are really well-covered."
Copyright© 2000 Iomega Corporation. Iomega, Zip, Zip 100, Zip 250, Jaz, Clik! and ZipCD are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Iomega Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Certain other product names, brand names and company names may be trademarks or designations of their respective owners.
|
