Foresight Financial Group Chooses Crossroads

Crossroads
Systems, Inc., provider of data archive solutions, announced that
Foresight Financial Group, Inc. is one of the latest organizations to deploy
SPHiNX to ensure powerful DR capabilities in the event of data loss or
corruption.

SPHiNX’ is a holistic data protection appliance that meets the specific needs
of corporations, remote offices and data centers and provides reliable DR
capabilities for mid-range server and open system environments.

Headquartered in Northwestern Illinois with
assets totaling $891 million, Foresight is a financial holding company with 12
offices in the Illinois counties of Winnebago and Stephenson. It continues
to hold the largest market share of deposits of any financial institution
operating in Stephenson County. Foresight centralizes the IT operations for its
five community banks that otherwise wouldn’t be able to house the robust
infrastructure needed to maintain sensitive data and comply with FFIEC
regulations.

Foresight previously executed its backups
via an IBM LTO-4 library and deployed a replication solution for HA, but
retrieving data from the physical library was challenging. If data needed to be
recovered, it would require close to an entire day for recovery, without a 100%
guarantee. With a 99% virtualized environment and the need for 24/7
availability, Foresight required a real-time method to access backup data in
the case of an emergency.

Foresight discovered SPHiNX through its
partner, North American Systems International, Inc. SPHiNX is a virtual tape appliance that offers complete DR
protection with consolidated backups. For Foresight, SPHiNX simplified backups
via virtual tape and expedited data recovery. The SPHiNX system integrated with
Foresight’s existing IBMi environment and did not hinder the real-time Internet
banking operations.

"Our
Internet banking product is real-time. We couldn’t afford any downtime,"
said Aaron Patterson, CIO at Foresight. "The smooth transition to SPHiNX enabled us to enhance our DR
infrastructure without interrupting ongoing processes. SPHiNX was up and
running and ready to go in 30 minutes. If you already have system to system
replication, most people think you wouldn’t need SPHiNX for backups. But the
truth is – you do. If you only use replication, you could replicate an entire
corrupt database and have no way to get back your original data. SPHiNX has
been a big help with our DR site. SPHiNX can automate the entire backup, send
data over the wire, and the virtual tape at the DR site is ready and can be
recovered immediately."

"Crossroads is pleased to announce
Foresight as one of its latest customers to deploy SPHiNX," said Glenn
Haley, senior product manager at Crossroads Systems. "The SPHiNX virtual tape appliance meets or exceeds compliance
requirements for financial institutions and provides faster backup for
business-critical data. Seamless installation into the IBMi environment along
with automated encryption and logging allows organizations such as Foresight to
stay online, remain compliant, and reduce the time and resources devoted to
backups and DR."