Infrastructure Services: CSC Helps Client Improve its Data Backup Performance

Pleased with the consistent and proactive working style of the India Event Management Centre (EMC) Backup team on three of the accounts, the client requested the India team to commence backup failure monitoring for its Enterprise Backup Environments (EBEs).

To begin with, our EMC team initiated Knowledge Transfer from three different client locations. Having gathered the information from local staff, the India team moved ahead implementing round-the-clock backup monitoring for EBEs. The success of the data backup improvement strengthened the client’s faith in moving work to CSC India for this project.

Business Challenge

Data backup and recovery has always been the paramount criterion for any financial institution to ensure high levels of data security and customer satisfaction. In an effort to make data more secure in case of any disaster, the client had to focus towards:

• Managing and protecting critical and sensitive financial data of end users


• Handling end user data spread across various Personal Computer (PC) hard drives and servers


• Managing time, costs and complexity involved in regular backup plans and recovery management


• Managing additional storage capacity and network bandwidth without losing track of data backup


• Providing quick restore of the operational state of data and data re-run, in case of disaster

CSC India's Contribution

CSC India’s Event Management Centre (EMC) team initiated a focused and structured Knowledge Transfer from the client locations. The EMC India Backup and India Storage Engineering teams started 24x7 activities towards implementation of backup improvements in tandem with the client.

The team had taken following initiatives to ensure minimal backup failures:

• 24x7x365 proactive monitoring of client environment and successful backup reporting


• In-time resolution and escalation of backup failures


• Effective and timely remediation of any backup failures or issues affecting backups


• Designed various remediation programs to increase the backup retrieval success percentage like:
  
  • Use of net backup instead of Brightstor to provide better backup management
  
  
  • Upgradation of existing hardware
  
  
  • Migration of backup support from client location to CSC data centres, which provide 24x7 support (client site has only 9/5 support)

CSC picked up the project when backup retrieval success rate was 80% and in the last two quarters, the success rate has increased by more than 15%. Currently, the team with its expertise in data backup recovery is working to uplift the backup retrieval success percentage for the clients in other geographies.

Key Achievements

Based on the client's backup service level agreement (SLA) chart above, the turnaround in backup performance for the last two quarters has changed drastically.

Some key achievements are highlighted below:

• Consistently exceeding backup successes percentage by 97%


• Significant reduction of backup failures


• Extensive improvement in turnaround of the backup performance overtime


• 15% improvement in data recovery and out-performance in meeting and exceeding SLA targets


• Enhanced data security for all critical and sensitive end user financial data


• Enhanced business performance leading to increased end user confidence and improved customer satisfaction

Appreciations have come from Service Delivery Manager (SDM) for the account who states, “Three consecutive months of improvements is good indication that the improvement program is paying off. So, many thanks to everyone involved in the project for the hard work and commitment shown to date. Today, the CSC India team is meeting all its SLAs and is well integrated with the ISU implementation team."

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