Vision Solutions Chosen by Crown Point Community School

Vision Solutions, Inc., high availability and disaster recovery solutions provider in the IBM Power Systems markets, announced that Crown Point Community School (CPCS), a K-12 public school system, has put into place iTERA HA in order to protect its financial operations, student records, school bus routes and more.

Prior to the installation of iTERA HA, CPCS relied solely on tape-based backups to protect its data. But when they did need to retrieve data from those tapes, recovery times were lengthy. Permanent data loss was also a concern because even when tape backups are performed every night, if a disaster occurs late in the day, up to 24 hours worth of data may be lost. In a true disaster scenario, the probability was that the lost data and transactions would never be recovered.

Vision Solutions’ constantly maintains a complete, accurate backup of data and applications on a backup server. It then stands ready to switch users to that backup whenever the primary system becomes unavailable or whenever normal, planned system maintenance is required. It eliminates the risk of costly downtime and data loss that disasters and even normal maintenance pose to businesses. iTERA HA’s self-configuring, self-monitoring and self-healing features ensure minimal administration time and free IT staff to focus on more important work.

CPSC determined it had a critical need to protect its data and keep it continuously available. Through a variety of online systems, parents and students can access data via the Web and counselors at the school can do scheduling online, among other applications. Any problem or outage within the system can affect thousands of people. As a result, CPSC set an objective of always being able to be back online within no more than 15 minutes. Vision Solutions’ software also allows the corporation to be back online after an emergency in less than just five minutes.

While iTERA HA certainly gives CPSC’s IT team peace of mind, it provides important benefits, including:

• Improved community (customer) reputation, for both service levels and financial stewardship
• Continuous access to important systems for parents, teachers and students resulting in enhanced school/home partnership and learning outcomes
• Reduced cost for system maintenance and development projects because such work can be done during normal school hours without disrupting critical system access.

"From 1993 to now, I’ve never missed a payroll run," said Allen Rawlings, IT administrator for CPCS. "Having iTERA HA in place makes me much more confident that I never will."

CPCS currently runs two IBM i-based servers. The primary system is located in Crown Point’s high school. The backup server is situated in CPCS’s central office. iTERA HA maintains real-time replication between the two so that the backup server is ready to immediately take over operations whenever necessary. As Rawlings explains it: "It was nice that the initial cost of the iTERA HA software and two new servers well within our budget. But the real driver was that, when we figured out the total value over time, the value of eliminating downtime and lost productivity, it was clear that our investment will be more than repaid. Long term, it saves us real money. The protection pays for itself."

Crown Point Community School Corporation, headquartered in Crown Point, Indiana, is home to more than 7,600 students. It encompasses seven elementary schools, two middle schools, a high school and one alternative school. Crown Point Community School Corporation’s vision is to be the premier school corporation in Indiana, evidenced by attaining the highest levels of quality school indicators correlated to academic excellence for all students. The mission is to ensure that all students become lifelong learners through the highest quality educational program.