Archiving to the Cloud: A Real-World Example

May 17th, 2010

Daniel Milburn

By Daniel Milburn

Companies with aggressive growth strategies involving multiple acquisitions are confronted with numerous IT concerns as a result of finalized mergers.

Issues that involve IT infrastructure, data management, and resource consolidation become paramount with quick remedies needed to assure these problems do not negatively impact expansion efforts.

This was exactly the case with KapStone Paper and Packaging Corporation (KapStone) as revenue went from $300M/annually to $1B in just three years. KapStone needed a solution that could accommodate growth trends, reduce storage inefficiencies, improve manageability, lower costs, and provide a roadmap for progress. They found it– in the cloud!

KapStone was able to leverage their existing Enterprise Vault™ investment by choosing Consonus SAFE™ (Secure Archiving for the Enterprise™) to address their IT concerns. A Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) configuration of Symantec Enterprise Vault, SAFE effectively automates the storage, retention, and discovery of unstructured data including email and file systems. Built on a cloud computing infrastructure, data is no longer bound to one physical location or computer.

Without centralized data centers, businesses usually store information on many media, from USB flash drives to laptop hard drives and server clusters. By using SAFE and replicating all data onto a central, efficient data storage infrastructure, costs are reduced, management is simplified, and risk is minimized.

KapStone realized all these benefits and more, including:

An 86% file size reduction in just two weeks
Reduction in backup time
Projected initial ROI within four months
An estimated 280% ROI within three years
Ability to immediately reclaim existing storage
Elimination of outsourced storage costs
Reduced administrative burden
An improvement in overall, system performance
Reduced archive footprint to improve total cost of ownership

Consonus SAFE was able to deliver on the promise of a secure, reliable, and resilient cloud-based solution for file and email archiving. KapStone was so pleased with the results that they are currently reviewing additional strategic solutions that leverage virtualized data storage and management strategies to further improve cost reductions, increase productivity, operational flexibility and responsiveness.

To find out more about SAFE, virtualization technology, and cloud-based solutions provided by Consonus, visits us on the Web at www.Consonus.com.