Pryor & Morrow Architects Switches to AppAssure

AppAssure
Software, Inc. announced that Pryor & Morrow Architects, an
architecture firm with more than 300 years of combined experience in the fields
of architectural design, engineering, interior design, and construction,
switched from Symantec Backup Exec to AppAssure’s Replay 4 backup
and recovery solution.

With Replay’s CDP capabilities,
Pryor & Morrow Architects is reported to have restored critical data in
less than 10 minutes while making sure business emails and data are
continuously updated.

With 30 staff members in the two locations, Pryor
& Morrow’s data protection needs are crucial.
"On our servers are mission critical job folders, marketing information,
archived correspondence, and layered presentation boards," notes Kevin
Burchfield, landscape architect at Pryor & Morrow and sole IT staff.
"Our work and data change literally from hour to hour, sometimes minute to
minute."

These data change needs left Pryor & Morrow vulnerable because, as Burchfield experienced, its backup and disaster
recovery software wasn’t doing the work he needed it to do. "We were using
Backup Exec with a tape or Dell’s RD 1000," he explains. "Every day,
six days a week we’d do an incremental backup at the end of the day with new
and changed information. Then on the seventh day, I’d do a full backup of
everything. And each day I’d take the tapes home. If someone were working on a
presentation board in Photoshop or something with lots of layers, and then
accidentally saved over it, or if it had crashed, the entire data set would be
impossible to get back."

After nine years of struggling through this
insufficient process, Burchfield began to research the items that he needed
for backup
and disaster recovery, including continuous protection, fast item level
recovery, email backup protection, and ease of use. "Initially we thought
about updating our Backup Exec," says Burchfield. "But I’ve not at
all been impressed by Symantec products. Backup Exec is just huge and a robber,
taking a lot of resources on the server. It’s also expensive."

As Burchfield says, Pryor & Morrow needed
something cost-effective, robust, and at the same time right-sized to its
environment. They have found this in AppAssure’s Replay, says Burchfield.

"I did the research and I told the partners this
is what I like and what we need," explains Burchfield. "I told them
that Replay doesn’t hog the resources that Backup Exec does on the server, and
doesn’t give you lots of stuff you don’t need. I also told them the price, and
they said, ‘Let’s go with it!’."

According to Burchfield, Replay has given him the
ability to set the number of snapshots and the time interval according to Pryor
& Morrow’s data needs. "We’ve set them at 15-minute intervals,"
he says. "This way we can easily recover the changed data we need, or
those emails that were accidentally deleted, if necessary. Just yesterday
someone saved over a critical presentation board. Two minutes later I was able
to retrieve it. This couldn’t have happened before Replay."

"I can really rely on this software," says
Burchfield, summing up. "Backup Exec was just so complicated, but with
Replay, everything is clear and easy. I don’t worry as much anymore."