FACC AG Customer of Iternity

The success at a glance:

• Compliance with the aviation industry’s strict data retention regulation
• Perfect integration of the archive solution into existing IT infrastructure
• Central archive for SAP and development data
• Cost reduction with increasing flexibility and scalability

Company: FACC AG

Industry: Manufacturing of aircraft components and solutions

Background: Safety is top priority in the aviation industry. Strict regulations, long data retention periods, and internal compliance requirements were the reasons for FACC to search for an efficient solution for archiving important company data.

Challenges: Ensure data integrity for very long periods of time; connect different data sources and business divisions to the archive; integrate it into the existing IT infrastructure; achieve efficiency at lower costs.

Solution: iTernity Compliant Archive Software (iCAS) and OpenText

Security and Compliance as IT Drivers
Safety is a priority in the aviation industry. This also affects the IT infrastructure and the compliance requirements of the manufacturers in the industry. For example, certain company data must be stored unalterable and legally compliant for over 30 years due to product liability reasons.

FACC, a manufacturer of aircraft components and mobility solutions with offices in more than 13 countries, was also faced with the question: “How can critical company data be stored securely over long periods of time?” The answer was to implement an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution that connects with a long-term archiving software, iTernity iCAS.

FACC is a specialist in the design, development and manufacture of lightweight construction systems in the aerospace industry.

As a technology partner of all major aircraft and engine manufacturers, it works with its customers to develop solutions for the mobility of the future. An example of its competencies includes making aircraft components for wings, fuselage, and tail unit.

Highest Demands on Quality and Compliance
For legally compliant business operation, two data sources are primarily designated at FACC for audit-proof archiving. The first source is all data that are processed in ECM OpenText, such as invoices, incoming goods documents, contracts, and quality certificates. For these primarily SAP-related data, common regulatory requirements apply. For example, in Austria, business data must be kept for seven years according to the Bundesabgabenordnung (Federal Fiscal Code) §132.

The second data source comes from FACC Engineering which retains, e.g. construction and development documents. These data are subject to stricter burden of proof and longer retention periods. In most cases, the data retention obligation is made up of two components: 1) Dynamic, e.g. Product Life (how long an aircraft is operable), and 2) Fixed, e.g. the 3-5 years retention period set by legislator. Thus, a data retention time of over 30 years is common in this industry.

“The aviation industry is in nature a highly regulated sector. As a leading manufacturer in this industry, the quality assurance process with customers must be precise”, explains Stefan Wilflingseder, FACC’s chief information security officer and data protection coordinator. “This is why we have relied on iCAS for many years as the central archive for our SAP and development data”. 

Solution Requirements
In addition to legal obligations and compliance requirements, costs and performance also played an important role when FACC searched for an archiving solution. 

“Our hardware costs had risen sharply, and the solution we used to date was simply too slow and not sustainable,” recalls Wilflingseder. “It was paramount to us that the new solution is scalable, efficient, and has a good price-performance ratio.”

For this reason, FACC ultimately decided against a hardware-bound option from NetApp and opted for the software-based approach from iTernity.

Secure Archive with Further Potential for Future
FACC operates iCAS as a virtual machine in a VMware cluster. The hardware used is 3PAR storage solutions from HPE. Currently, the archive data is replicated at the storage level, but in the future, iCAS could also take over and optimize this task.

One of iCAS’ strengths is its continuous monitoring and verification of the correctness and validity of archive data based on its hash values. The integrity verification process is important to detect any type of data inconsistency, such as invalid data or silent data corruption. When iCAS detects data inconsistency, its self-healing feature automatically replaces the corrupt data with a valid copy from synchronous storage.

Focus on Efficiency and Flexibility
When Wilflingseder described the advantages of iCAS, he was particularly impressed by the efficiency and flexibility of the solution. As the solution is totally independent of the underlying hardware, the IT department at FACC did not have to add any new hardware at all and could simply use the existing IT infrastructure. “What we especially appreciate about iCAS is that we were able to implement it on our existing infrastructure, such as storage and virtualization.”

Even if there is a possibility for system changes or connections of new applications to the archive, the IT department sees no challenge in it.

“iCAS can be connected to various applications and hardware systems,” emphasizes Wilflingseder. “In case of future changes, the iCAS archive remains in place and is simply linked to the changed environment.”

This also applies to the scalability of the archive, thanks to its transparent licensing method and on-demand expansion of the archive volume.

In terms of iTernity’s technical support, Wilflingseder is satisfied with its response times, quality, and methods. There was rarely a need for technical support from iTernity as iCAS system runs safely and is low maintenance in the background.

Outlook into the Future
Wilflingseder argues that the significance of compliant archiving will grow in the future: “Compliant archiving has become more important than ever, according to several perspectives, since many areas are involved in it, such as special divisions, application users, and areas with focus on infrastructure, data protection, and compliance.” 

As data volumes grow continuously, FACC must deploy efficient and flexible solutions to cope with the increasing data management costs.

However, Wilflingseder sees that the greatest challenges are not in the tools and solutions but rather in the processes. Taking the digitization of archive documents as an example, he argues that it is more difficult to adapt existing business processes to this, e.g. by reducing paper consumption, as this always requires an intervention in the daily work and routines.

Nevertheless, Wilflingseder knows that his company is well prepared in this: “because FACC works very flexibly and future-oriented with OpenText and iCAS”.

He concluded with a personal view about the special characteristics of the industry: “We are currently celebrating our 30^th anniversary, so we haven’t reached the longest required retention time yet. The retention periods of our first manufactured products will not end until the next few years. This means, it is an urgent matter to do digital archiving.”

Future-Proof Solution for Data Integrity and Long-Term Archiving
Companies of all sectors with the most diverse demands on secure data storage rely on the software solution iCAS. All well-known ECM, ERP, DMS, PACS and e-mail systems are certified for iCAS and can be connected. iCAS helps you meet legal and internal compliance requirements, thereby minimizes business risks. As a hardware-independent solution, iCAS protects the integrity and security of data for the long term – flexible, future-proof, and cost-efficient!

A Central Platform for Data Management
The software solution iCAS acts as a central management layer between applications and the storage infrastructure. It ensures data integrity and availability over long periods of time regardless of the hardware used. While storage technologies and applications change over time, stored data remains consistent, secure, and highly available. Data migrations can be conducted by iCAS in the background without burdening production systems.