Cloud disaster recovery solution

Challenge:

A biopharmaceutical company sponsored a project to develop and implement a Disaster Recovery Program to improve the resiliency and recovery of critical business applications and infrastructure services. The company’s IT Leadership was intrigued with using public cloud services but could not find the right catalyst to initiate a cloud project. Also, the client’s IT engineering did not have the technical expertise or formalized processes to adopt, implement and maintain an integrated public and private cloud platform. While in the initial assessment phases of the company’s technical DR capability, Mazars Consultants quickly ascertained  the improbability of an on-premise DR solution because of inadequate data center capacity at any of the customer hosting sites to support the additional hardware footprint. The client’s vision and infrastructure capabilities supported the possibility to adopt cloud but more was needed to make the final determination. The client needed to:

• Evaluate hosting and DR software options
• Determine the feasibility of cloud as a viable DR platform
• Determine the strategic value and business appetite to host future business applications in the cloud
• Select the prescribed solution and initiate build activities
• Develop IT policies and procedures to effectively manage cloud services
• Train engineering teams to support cloud operations

Solution:

Mazars designed and implemented a simple, scalable cloud DR solution using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Zerto for AWS to protect the client’s critical IT assets. Our team assisted the customer in the product selection, design, implementation and testing of the technical solution as highlighted by the following activities:

• Researched, evaluated and tested several cloud and DR technology solutions
• Designed, built and implemented a standardized DR technical solution using AWS and Zerto for AWS
• Developed validation documentation and executed Installation Qualification and Operational Qualification testing in accordance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11
• Iteratively tested the recovery of each critical business application and supporting infrastructure system
• Developed operational runbooks and trained client IT resources

Results:

In close collaboration with the customer, we were able to develop and implement the DR technical solution that established a scalable, standardize DR solution and future cloud hosting platform for infrastructure services and business applications. The standardize cloud DR solution provided the following benefits:

• Provided protective capabilities to continuously replicate data and recovery services for 19 critical IT systems
• Transformed DR expenditures to a predictable “pay as you go” model
• Saved the client 20-40% in hardware, software and services costs as compared to other technical options
• Provided a path to further expand IT operations in the public cloud

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