Windstream Introduces DR as a Service

Windstream Corp.‘s Hosted Solutions announced its new Disaster Recovery as a Service solution – combining replication and cloud technologies, and offering a fully hosted and managed disaster recovery solution.

Capitalizing on Windstream’s existing cloud infrastructure footprint, the Windstream Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution provides cost-effective methods to replicate and recover critical servers and data center infrastructure. By simplifying the disaster recovery process to speed recovery time, it recovers a customer’s infrastructure and runs it in the cloud.

By taking advantage of the economies of scale of cloud infrastructure, the solution delivers recovery times suited for mission-critical applications at a previously unachievable cost. At the same time, leveraging Windstream’s data center hosting expertise allows customers to outsource both the architectural design and testing of their disaster recovery service.

"Managed disaster recovery in the cloud can deliver protection that is better, cheaper and faster than internal solutions," said Rob Carter, Windstream’s director of managed hosted solutions. "It isn’t just a matter of cost. A fully managed Disaster Recovery as a Service solution also reduces the burden of infrastructure tasks and expertise during the testing or real world enactment of disaster recovery plans on businesses." According to a 2011 Forrester Research survey of data center decision makers, about two-thirds of those surveyed said they "considered Disaster Recovery to be of high or critical importance in the decision to adopt cloud services."

DRaaS helps companies surmount the significant roadblocks to do it yourself implementation, including high CapEx costs, limited personnel for adequate service management, and concerns about security. Windstream’s DRaaS solves these challenges, providing data storage, replication, and managed restoration in an affordable, efficient, and reliable manner.

It is available with replication
and managed recovery architectures
to suit requirements, including:

• Host-based replication, or storage-based replication for EMC and NetApp customers
• For customers with on-premise NetApp deployments, Windstream Hosted Solutions offers remote NetApp systems with support for SnapMirror and SnapVault replication, allowing customers to replicate or archive data to offsite storage as needed while maintaining the Data ONTAP features and capabilities they demand.
• Managed recovery to public, private or hybrid Windstream cloud environments with recovery points for business applications
• Integration with customers’ existing VPN or private network solutions; Windstream private network customers can add the replication and recovery cloud environment as a node on their existing MPLS network.

Windstream Hosted Solutions provides data center services for thousands of companies, covering their mission-critical data, e-commerce applications, servers, Internet access and more, with guaranteed levels of consistent uptime.

Windstream has more than $6 billion in annual revenues and is listed on the S&P 500 index.