Weddel Swift, UK

With a pedigree going back 120 years, Weddel Swift Distribution Ltd is the distribution arm of the Randall Parker Food Group serving the Butcher on the high street. Weddel Swift has 14 depots or centers across the United Kingdom, employing a mix of physical and virtual servers (including six Windows servers). The company relied on an outsourced tape-based solution which also required them to duplicate all communications, resulting in long recovery times should a disaster occur. Weddel Swift was looking for a highly reliable disaster recovery solution that could provide fast recovery, yet was also easy to use and affordable.

After reviewing several alternatives, Weddel Swift chose the onQ Site Recovery Appliance to replace its existing tape-based solution, which cut recovery time in the event of a complete site failure from 2 days to 2 hours. An onQ appliance resides at a local depot, so if disaster strikes the onQ Recovery Node transparently takes over and quickly connects users to their data again. "It's simply a case of re-routing the communications, and off we go. onQ provides fast recovery with a lot less hassle," said Sue Hulbert, IT manager. Plus, "onQ releases us from having to change out tapes every day. With 14 sites, we travel a lot and onQ lets us access data from wherever we are. You can't change tapes from wherever you are."

• "I can sleep at night!" says Sue Hulbert, IT Manager.
• Cuts recovery time from 2 days (with tape) to 2 hours (includes re-routing of communications for managed network) in the event of a complete site failure.
• Improved reliability: "Tapes are not as reliable - you don't know how good your backup is until you need it."
• Ease and timeliness of recovering files is particularly valuable.