Find out how Cristie Software can help your business IT disaster recovery plans and bare machine recovery solutions to keep your downtime to a minimum and critical data recoverable. www.cristie.com

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Cristie Software November News Bulletin

Read the latest Cristie Software News Update 

Cristie Software August 2012 News Bulletin
November 2012 Update
Welcome to the Cristie Software News Bulletin!

What a packed edition of the bulletin we have this month with the launch of our latest product announced! CloneManager has been in development for most of the year and we are very proud that it has already gained a huge amount of interest including a global outsourcing company who are looking to employ it as their main migration software!

We also have a new employee to introduce to you, a new customer case study to read, a new product discussion group launched and some new collateral to keep you up-to-date with our product news.

We hope that you have had a successful start to Q4 and please get in touch if we can help support any deals that you have in the pipeline or if you need any advice for new software for your own business.

If you currently purchase our solutions TBMR and CBMR through IBM - read the latest blog post about changes to how to purchase, with a move to IBM's Passport Advantage.

Why not keep in touch with what we are getting up to by following us on Twitter @CristieSoftware, LinkedIn and on our blog site.

Natalie Schofield - Marketing Manager
All the best,
Natalie Schofield,
International Marketing Manager





Product News... 

Introducing the latest solution from Cristie Software - CloneManager:

Latest solution - Cristie CloneManager. Server Migrations and Clones

CloneManager –the latest solution announced for release very soon! CloneManager enables machine migrations and server moves on an easy to use drag and drop GUI.
For more information visit the website at www.clonemanager.com

  • Read the full the Press Release here
  • View the CloneManager Datasheet download
  • Have a look at the CloneManager PowerPoint Presentation download
For more information on pricing and beta testing contact us here

Interested in finding out more?
We will be arranging a number of introduction product webinars, if you are interested in registering for one of these online events please email us and once the dates are released we will forward you the information.

For webinars or further product information please email sales here.


Customer Case Study...

Read how Kwik Fit Financial Services have used in TBMR to support their operations and business continuity plans.

Kwik-Fit Financial Services“Sometimes a good hardware maintenance contract and a good data backup schedule just isn't enough to ensure that services can be recovered quickly. Our experience shows that there is a significant gap here and we are relying more and more on TBMR to fill this gap.”- Duncan Waddell, Second Line Team Lead, KFFS
Kwik Data Recovery Called For As Server Fails For Main Customer Contact Centre

Kwik-Fit Financial Services relies on a number of fileservers running software applications which are key to the day to day operations of the business. Running a fully operational contact centre is essential to keep customer service levels high and ensure that the corporate aims of a fast, courteous and professional service are maintained.

Following a corruption of the OS disks on one of the critical fileservers, it took several days to recover fully and had a major impact on the service level...

Read the full case study here

New LinkedIn TBMR Customer Group...

LinkedInWe want to hear from you! We have launched a new product development and discussion group for all of our TBMR customers and associates. You can help share best practices, discuss experiences and new features, helping aid Cristie to shape the TBMR future product roadmap.

The group Cristie Software TBMR Product Discussions & Development, offers you the chance to make valuable contibutions to future improvements and developments for our products or maybe make suggestions of other new solutions or new products integrations, that would help resolve your business' disaster recovery, data protection and migration issues.

We hope you will join us and become part of the Cristie world-wide discussion and development community. We are also looking at creating these type of groups for our other solutions - get in touch if you would be interested in joining other product groups - email me at natalie.schofield@cristie.com

Join in the TBMR conversation today by applying for membership here http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Cristie-Software-TBMR-Product-Discussions-4692242


New Collateral...

We have created new PowerPoint presentations introducing our product range for you to use:

View the PowerPoint Presentations here:
Along with a range of new Sector overviews. We hope you find them useful as reference points:


Introductions...

We would like to introduce you to our newest member of staff to join the Cristie Software family:
Clair Brown, Account Manager
CLAIR BROWN
Accounts Manager



Clair who has managed a successful book keeping company, joins the company part-time to help run the accounts team. We are very pleased that Clair has joined us as she brings an invaluable skill-set to the company.

Other News...

The Green IT Strategy – cloud and e-procurement take center stage
CIO Jennifer Rigby, Department of Energy and Climate Change announced the driving forces of the Government’s green IT strategy, as cloud and e-procurement whilst speaking at the Efficient ICT: 2012 Conference at Westminster in Central London...

Read the full blog post here


Bare Machine Recovery for TSM and NetWorker:
Include BMR in your Disaster Recovery plan simply by adding one of Cristie Software’s BMR bolt-on solutions. At Cristie Software we can enhance the capabilities of both IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and EMC NetWorker with solutions that add essential Bare Machine Recovery functionality...

Read the full blog post here


Cristie Software Ltd, New Mill, Chestnut Lane, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 3EH
Website: www.cristie.com
Email: sales@cristie.com

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Cristie Software strengthens relationship with IBM as products are included in Passport Advantage®


PRESS RELEASE

Cristie Software, Stroud, UK
27th November 2012


From the 27th November 2012, Cristie’s CBMR and TBMR software products will now be available to order through Passport Advantage®.  This will significantly simplify the quoting and ordering process for both IBM and all IBM channel partners.

CBMR and TBMR deliver best-in-class BMR software that provides fast, automated disaster recovery – whether to similar or dissimilar hardware.  TBMR fully integrates with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and can recover directly from TSM without having to perform separate backups.  This provides considerable savings in storage space and network bandwidth.  CBMR and TBMR will typically restore server operating systems in less than ten minutes and are able to perform multiple server recoveries simultaneously.

Ian Cameron, CEO at Cristie Software said “Cristie has worked closely with IBM for the last 5 years and this is an exciting step that should greatly strengthen our relationship.  The previous procurement system made it difficult for IBM and partner sales execs to quote and order our software and this move will take all that pain away.  We therefore expect to see a big increase in TSM users’ adoption of TBMR to provide their disaster recovery solution.”

To find out more about the move to the IBM PPA system for your region please find links to the IBM documentation which includes product part codes:

APAC PPA Announcement documentation
EMEA PPA Announcement documentation
USA PPA Announcement documentation

- ends

About Cristie Software Limited
Cristie Software Limited was established in the UK in 2007 and has grown rapidly to become a leading software provider specializing in data protection and machine recovery and migration.

The software provides fast, reliable and highly automated backup, recovery and migration solutions for Windows, Linux and other Unix machines.  Cristie Software solutions are sold worldwide by IBM and through a global network of leading resellers.

Connect with Cristie Software on Twitter and LinkedIn

Press Contact
Natalie Schofield – International Marketing Manager
Email Natalie here / Website: www.cristie.com


All trademarks are duly acknowledged and are used only to indicate compatibility or integration with those products.
Cristie, TBMR and CBMR are trademarks of Cristie Software Limited.
© 2012 Cristie Software Limited

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Simplify your DR process by recovering to a virtual environment using Cristie’s BMR solutions


Cristie Software are experts in Bare Machine Recovery and with their range of BMR solutions businesses can recover from physical or virtual environments.


Recovering to a virtual machine - the benefits
So what are the advantages of recovering to a virtual environment? 

Well, the advantages are split into two categories dependent on usage, for testing and for disaster recovery.




For testing purposes:
  1. You don’t need dedicated hardware. You can create a virtual machine in minutes and can delete it after the test
  2. May not have to allocate operating system and other licenses to the test machine
  3. Testing can be automated and scheduled
  4. Automate your recoveries using Cristie’s Answer File creation tools

As part of a Disaster Recovery plan:
  1. Don’t have to have dedicated hardware standing by for recoveries
  2. Drivers required for VMware and HyperV VM’s are included with Cristie’s BMR software
  3. Can help improve Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) if DR is due to an incident like flooding etc. not reliant on a physical server being available
  4. Possible to reduce overall costs for Business Continuity due to no dedicated hardware requirements

Cristie Software can help

At Cristie Software our BMR solutions work across virtual and physical, so you don’t need to purchase and maintain a separate product for each environment and the products seamlessly can connect the two interfaces when recovery is required.

Cristie Software provide BMR, backup and migration solutions worldwide through a network of leading global resellers and business partners including IBM.

The range of BMR solutions from Cristie Software includes:

  • TBMRBare Machine Recovery exclusively for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). Allows TSM users to recover their machines direct from TSM
  • NBMR Bare Machine Recovery solely for EMC’s (formally Legato) NetWorker. Recovers machines fast directly from NetWorker to a pre-disaster state
  • CBMR – Cristie Bare Machine Recovery, a stand-alone solution designed to provide complete protection of data, as well as the ability to recover critical machines from scratch within minutes 

CBMR, TBMR and NBMR all support dissimilar hardware restores and recovery to other physical or virtual environments. Our software supports a range of operating systems including AIX, Linux, Windows and Solaris.

With dedicated support teams that are available 24/7 for priority one failures, Cristie offer a first class service to their customers to ensure that downtime is kept to a minimum and business can return to a fully operational state as quickly and efficiently as possible.


Find out more information at www.cristie.com/products/disaster-recovery/

Monday, November 5, 2012

Kwik data recovery called for as server fails for main customer contact centre

Cristie Software's latest Customer Case Study: Kwik-Fit Financial Services.


Product: TBMR


Overview

Kwik-Fit Financial Services Case Study - TBMR
Launched in 1995 to provide an insurance offering to customers of Kwik-Fit garages, Kwik-Fit Insurance has grown rapidly in the 17 years since to become one of the UK’s leading personal lines insurance intermediaries.

Originally offering car insurance, the intermediary has expanded to incorporate a host of personal lines offerings including home insurance and breakdown cover with around one million live products. Kwik-Fit Insurance was the forerunner for what has become the Kwik-Fit Financial Services group. KFI is the largest broker in a group which also includes Express Insurance, the specialist car and motorbike intermediary (acquired in 2007) and The Green Insurance Company, an environmentally friendly intermediary who offset customer’s cars carbon emissions (launched in 2007).

KFFS was bought by Ageas (UK) Ltd in 2010 to strengthen their retail operations which include RIAS, Ageas Insurance Solutions and Castle Cover.


The Challenge

KFFS relies on a number of Fileservers running software applications which are key to the day to day operations of the business. Running a fully operational contact centre is essential to keep customer service levels high and ensure that the corporate aims of a fast, courteous and professional service are maintained.

Following a corruption of the OS disks on one of the critical fileservers, it took several days to recover fully and had a major impact on the service level.  The decision was taken to look into how best to reduce outage time involved in this kind of problem to an absolute minimum and avoid experiencing such a detrimental outage again.


The Solution

TBMR was introduced to KFFS by their IBM partner Barrachd as a product that was unique in the way it worked closely with their existing backup software (TSM), meaning that it could be introduced with a relatively small amount of extra work and could be maintained alongside their normal backup schedule.

TBMR was installed to protect a number of the most critical servers for the contact centre to help get recovery times significantly reduced in the event of another failure and to reduce vulnerability to customer service levels.


The Resulting Benefit

TBMR installation on the contact centres’ critical servers has given great peace of mind to management and have yet to be ‘used in anger’ to recover from a failure. The further implementation of TBMR is now being evaluated to extend coverage to other parts of the estate after recently suffered a glitch and having both OS disks on a document scanning fileserver fail at the same time, which led to four days of solid work to get the application running again and the database restored.  Purchase costs of TBMR to protect servers that are less critical to the business but still involve extensive time and effort on behalf of the support teams to recover, are justified when evaluated against this kind of manual recovery.
Duncan Waddell, Second Line Team Lead, Kwik-Fit Financial Services
“Sometimes a good hardware maintenance contract and a good data backup schedule just isn't enough to ensure that services can be recovered quickly.  Our experience shows that there is a significant gap here and we are relying more and more on TBMR to fill this gap.” - Duncan Waddell, Second Line Team Lead, KFFS


TBMR Product Overview

TBMR provides fast automated recovery for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) users. In the event of a server failure, TBMR will recover the operating system and applications direct from the TSM backup. The recovery can be to the original or to new dissimilar hardware or to a virtual machine.


  • IBM recommended solution for BMR for TSM - find out more
  • Rebuild a server OS in under ten minutes
  • Uses the TSM backups for Disaster Recovery
  • Multiple servers can be recovered simultaneously
  • TBMR is the ONLY software that can recover direct from the TSM server without performing a separate backup

Find out more at:
www.cristie.com/products/disaster-recovery/tbmr

Contact Cristie Software

Email: sales@cristie.com
Tel: +44 1453 847000
Web: www.cristie.com