RESTON, VA--(Marketwire - May 5, 2009) - Imagine Schools, a non-profit educational
organization and operator of 72 public charter schools in 12 states and the
District of Columbia, understands the difficulties of working under tight
budgets particularly in today's cost-conscious economic environment.
However, due to its distributed environment, this relatively small
organization faces many of the same e-mail and database management
challenges experienced by Fortune 500 companies.
"Managing 3,300 e-mail boxes along with Imagine's financial system, student
information database and school Websites from a central data center is an
immense responsibility," said Matt Noponen, director of IT for Imagine
Schools. "If something happens to those centralized systems, Imagine
Schools across the country are impacted."
As a result, Imagine Schools relies on Replay AppImage from AppAssure
Software to backup Exchange, SQL servers, and school websites. "Replay is
easy to use," said Rich Frangiamore, corporate network administrator for
Imagine Schools. "It's like navigating Windows Explorer. It's so flexible I
can restore a single message or an entire database with one click."
The decision to use Replay AppImage came after two experiences. Imagine's
Exchange database suffered an "unrecoverable corruption" and was out of
commission for three weeks. Noponen was using an off-site service at the
time and explained the inconvenience of such an approach. "We had to ship
a copy of our database down from our service provider and attempt to work
through an extremely inconvenient process," he said. "It took forever. That
solution just didn't work. We hated it."
A second product wasn't much more effective as Imagine sought a better
backup and restore solution for Imagine School's Exchange environment. In
fact, a failover/mirror application for backup and restoring purposes also
proved unsuccessful. "The first time we tried to fail over, our public
folders broke," Frangiamore said. "It was a monumental waste of money."
When Imagine Schools decided that Replay AppImage for Exchange was the
right fit for its IT needs, the third time proved to be the charm. Shortly
after implementing the solution, Imagine Schools put Replay AppImage to the
test when the CEO had difficulties with his Blackberry synchronization and
lost access to his calendar. Using Replay AppImage, Frangiamore located the
CEO's calendar information in a recent snapshot and selected it. Somewhat
believing the process was too easy, Frangiamore said, "I went to the CEO's
desk, opened his Exchange calendar, and there was all the data. Needless to
say, I was the hero of the day thanks to Replay."
Replay AppImage offers users the ability to:
-- Eliminate backup windows with continuous images throughout the day
-- Access Exchange during a live recovery
-- Decrease disk space requirements with built-in data de-duplication and
compression
-- Recover the entire Exchange application from bare-metal in just a few
clicks
-- Reduce traditional tape processes and tape infrastructure from their
environment
Replay AppImage is continuing to help Imagine Schools save time and money
associated with backup and restoration. "What we paid for Replay AppImage
is the equivalent of what we spent on just a single month of backup
service," according to Noponen. "With Replay AppImage, we get all the
benefits of that service and more with no ongoing fees."
About Replay AppImage
Replay AppImage is an application-aware, application imaging solution that
automatically and continuously protects Windows applications. It is the
only solution that eliminates the backup window and continuously checks for
application corruption. It also uniquely leverages virtualization to
automatically create and continuously update standby virtual machines.
Enabling users to access applications, including email, during a live
recovery, Replay AppImage also recovers entire applications from bare-metal
in just a few clicks.
About AppAssure Software
AppAssure Software is a provider of innovative backup and disaster recovery
software that has been purpose-built for Windows applications. Designed to
protect the applications, not just the data, AppAssure solutions deliver
high-value features for reliable data protection that is corruption-free.
Using a centralized server architecture, AppAssure solutions feature
off-host processing that will eliminate backup windows and enable a live
restore for a down application. As a result, IT administrators can have the
confidence that their Windows applications are completely protected and
easily recoverable in the event of data loss or disaster. AppAssure is a
Gold Certified Microsoft partner, and a member of VMware and BlackBerry
alliance programs. For more information, please visit
www.AppAssure.com.
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Erin Jones
E.S. Jones PR for AppAssure
704.664.2170