Confirm Disaster Recovery under control

03 August 2006

Terrorist incidents, natural disasters and disruptions to power supply have highlighted the need for business systems to continue functioning in the face of major operational interference.

As operations become more complex and interdependent via common networks the impact of such disturbances has increased.

Recognising the importance of its Confirm information brokerage system to clients, CITEC began a major project to upgrade its Confirm disaster recovery (DR) solution.

Project Manager Angela Wu said the aim was to ensure CITEC Confirm could continue to function following a disaster and to minimise any data losses from such an event.

"The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority's (APRA) internationally accepted benchmark requires that in the event of a disaster, business recovery and operational services must be resumed within 24 hours.

"CITEC has validated its new Confirm DR solution by successfully performing real 'fail over' and 'fail back' tests of all Confirm servers and associated networking infrastructure.

"CITEC exceeded APRA standards by completing these tests in less than eight hours."

System Architect and Technical Co-ordinator David Wright highlighted CITEC's commitment to quality service management and delivery.

"The CITEC Confirm DR solution incorporates many best practice design elements including real time replication using Storage Area Network (SAN) disk array technologies, multiple Dark Fibre communication links between the primary and secondary data centres for secure, reliable, high speed inter-site communications, and redundant servers and networking infrastructure," David said.

"We annually test the processes and train key people to use them as the confidence of our customers is of utmost importance to us.

"The implementation of CITEC Confirm DR represents a major milestone in CITEC's on-going commitment to providing effective business continuity and DR solutions for our own and our client's business critical systems."

CITEC Confirm Business Development Manager Rhonda Cunningham further acknowledged the business benefits of this upgrade.

"The enhanced DR aligns with key strategic business priorities," Rhonda said.

"These accomplishments further consolidate CITEC Confirm's position at the forefront of the Australian information brokerage market, processing some five million real time transactions each year."

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