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Amway is a global leader in direct sales with more than three million independent business owners (IBOs) in more than 80 countries and territories worldwide. No other direct selling company can come close to its longevity, stability, and global reach. For more than 45 years, Amway Corporation has made it possible for people to start a business of their own. Originally known for direct selling of our household cleaning products, such as SA8 Laundry Detergent and L.O.C. Liquid Organic Concentrate, its growing business opportunities are now supported by an excellent portfolio of hundreds of high-quality products and brands that can only be purchased through our IBOs.
Amway Korea, leader of the Korea Direct Selling Association, applied to be a Foreign Investment Corporation in 1987 and received approval in 1988. Today it uses a backup and disaster recovery solution based on Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Windows. As electronic commerce depend heavily on servers to process sales, it is essential to develop a sound disaster recovery strategy to continue delivering customer service even when disaster strikes.
Challenge
Amway Korea introduced its electronic commerce system in 1999. Currently, Amway Korea acquires 65% of its sales revenue from electronic commerce so server utilization of various departments continues to grow. However, the whole internal Window Servers infrastructure did not support real-time backup and were also incompatible with different kinds of servers, frequently resulting in systems problems. As a result, Amway Korea started to develop the Disaster Recovery and Backup System for Window NT Server as a part of ABN (Amway Business Network: supporting chain for sales with CRM, CTI, and web), which helps achieve business continuity.
At the first step of the project, Amway started benchmarking tests on disaster recovery and backup solutions of major brands. Considering the fast recovery and backup speed, reliability, scalability, maintenance, and return of investment rate, Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Windows was chosen as the most effective and efficient backup solution. It provides a stable electronic commerce environment, helps Amway Korea offer a consistent high quality of customer service, and supports secure management for the intra-administrators.
Including testing and implementation, this project launched in March 2006. The rollout and full production started in June 2006.
Product Evaluation
Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Windows minimizes downtime by restoring a Windows Server in just minutes, not hours or days. This is possible because the image of the server hard disk includes not only data, but also the operating system, applications, configuration files, network files, and everything else that allows the server to operate. Should a file, file system, operating system or any other software component become damaged, or should the hard disk itself become physically unable to operate, the image of the disk can be restored to a new hard drive. In the case of software failures, specific files or folders can be restored.
Integrated management is also possible with stable backup process. Administrators can always access to the entire network system, including servers, desktop systems, and notebook computers, through the Central Management Console.
Additionally, automated backup is easily completed with the scheduling function of Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Windows. The systems administrator can be informed as to the results of a backup operation through e-mail, a Windows pop-up, or via the Simple Network Management Protocol.
Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Windows offers Acronis Universal Restore, an optional application that recovers the system to totally different hardware. The program also supports System Partition Recovery by using remote computer and Microsoft VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service), a technology used to support PiT (point-in-time) snapshot framing as well as managing the backup of open Windows and database applications. Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Windows also supports 64-bit hardware and software, including the latest versions of Microsoft’s server and virtual server software.
Immediate Benefits
Through this system, Amway Korea is able to protect its customers’ business continuity by ensuring that should there be a server outage, data will be restored quickly and easily. Economic damage is significantly reduced using stable migration operations and immediate systems backup and recovery. Today, increased customer satisfaction and competitiveness are expected from efficient IT investment and rapid systems and software deployment.
Using Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Windows, backup of whole system of Window NT server has been done during system building process and there is backing up of added system once in a month as well as occasional backups. Individual users’ local drives are backed up twice a month and if necessary, they are also additionally stored in DVD or exterior disk.
“If the system goes down, it will cause fatal damages because most of Amway’s sales are from electronic commerce,” said Kyung In Cho, Amway Korea’s manager of the IT infrastructure department. “Therefore, we must minimize disaster occurrence and if one does occurs, there must be a fast recovery. For this reason, Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Windows is the most optimized solution for our business. Both users and administrators benefit from a high level of convenience because the user interface is so easy to use, the company doesn’t need to have specially trained engineers to run the backup and restore operations. Acronis also saves the company a huge amount of support costs charged by other systems vendors like the HP servers. As a result, Amway Korea is very pleased with the Acronis solution; it has exceeded our expectations.”
Extended Deployment
Amway Korea intends to expand the development of necessary disaster recovery and backup system, which will facilitate the expansion of its integrated management of dispersed IT infrastructure environment. As the infrastructure is expanded, customer service will be further enhanced as well.
“With the Acronis solution, we have a secure, highly effective, economic and manageable infrastructure. I’m very satisfied with the responsibility, fast service, and strong support from the technology specialists of Acronis,” said Kyung In Cho.
“We support business continuity through planning, testing, and setting migrations,” said Kun-Woo Lee, Korea country manager of Acronis. “To offer the service with best quality, we also investigate the client’s application, business, and system environment. Our solutions are used by Korea Minting and Security Printing, Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance, POSCO, and Korail. With our industry experience and expertise, the most optimized disaster recovery and backup system will be offered to the domestic demands”
Quote of the person in charge
Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Windows is the most suitable solution for minimizing the chances of disasters and it recovers the damaged systems quickly and accurately. With the Acronis solution, Amway Korea secured a highly effective, economic, manageable infrastructure. This is especially important as we offer responsibility, fast service, and strong support with specialized technological engineers.
Manager, Kyung In Cho - Amway Korea, IT Infrastructure department
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