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Myron Steves | Insurance Solutions

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Problem:  Faced with tape-based data protection challenges, including complete backup failures, slow backup times that exceeded available production windows and completion failures over multiple days, Myron Steves needed to find a reliable backup with performance that would ensure that backups were completed in allowed windows.

Myron Steves is a broad-based insurance agent and wholesaler with strong property, casualty and healthcare divisions. Myron Steves is one office with four locations. Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin. Houston is headquarters. Healthcare, Information Technology, Claims, Policy Auditing, Customer Care (policy issuance, endorsements, etc.), Compliance, Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, Premium Finance, etc. are in Houston. Offices in San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin are Business Development offices with marketing and underwriting teams.

The Challenge:

Faced with tape-based data protection challenges, including complete backup failures, slow backup times that exceeded available production windows and completion failures over multiple days, Myron Steves needed to find a reliable backup with performance that would ensure that backups were completed in allowed windows.

Myron Steves turned to DS3 DataVaulting for a reliable and easy to manage data protection solution that delivered fast backup and retrieval of company data with an extremely low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

DS3 DataVaulting uses Asigra Televaulting, a WAN platform solution that delivers backup/restore service as a utility. Working closely with DS3 DataVaulting, a leading provider of scalable enterprise-level data management solutions, Myron Steves began initial testing of Asigra’s agentless enterprise-class off-site backup and restore service. Deployment was simple and easy, with Myron Steves installing Asigra’s agentless client software on only one node in each of their data centers to serve a heterogeneous Windows and Novell LAN enterprise environment. 

Delivering superior data protection, and improved data management capabilities for Myron Steves, corporate and policy data is protected with an automated scheduled backup, encrypted “at-rest” and “in-flight,” from Houston to DS3 DataVaulting’s data vault in Fairfax, Virginia where it is available for restoration 24x7 in the event of an emergency or major disaster. DS3 DataVaulting then mirrors Myron Steves data to a secondary data vault in Allen, Texas for an additional level of data protection. 

Initial testing involved a full backup of a server that took four hours to complete using Myron Steves tape system. Using Asigra Televaulting, the backup was finished in 30 minutes.  Other backups proved an increase in performance by a factor of eight to 10 times greater than tape.

Weekend tape backups of their GroupWise server had also been extremely problematic for Myron Steves, with the insurance company experiencing GroupWise performance issues and having extreme difficulties completing tape backups in the 60+ hour window between the end of business on Friday and start of the work week on Monday morning. Using Asigra, Myron Steves first full GroupWise backup was completed in 21 hours, and subsequent incremental backups are now completed in less than two hours every night. Asigra Televaulting features WAN optimization techniques such as global common file elimination to the block level, incremental backups and compression.

Results: 

  • 100% reliability
  • $200,000 savings over tape in 3 year period
  • 45% reduction in costs
   

“Asigra Televaulting continues to impress us with its performance, ease of use and 100% reliability, delivering secure and high speed backup with a low total cost of ownership,” said Russell Bennett, IT Manager for Myron Steves. “Over a three-year period, using Asigra will save our company more than $200,000 when compared with the cost of using tape – a 45 percent savings – delivering vastly improved backup reliability with highly significant savings.”

“When your job is to protect large, extended enterprises, you simply don’t fool around – you need a solution such as Asigra’s Televaulting that is proven and secure to safeguard your data,” said Stacy Hayes, vice president of operations and business development of DS3 DataVaulting. “Asigra delivers a means for companies to choose best-of-breed data protection regardless of their physical location, allowing businesses such as Myron Steves in Texas to successfully use a Virginia-based company such as ours for ongoing data protection.”

Myron F. Steves and Company:
Myron Steves is a financially secure, entrepreneurial managing general agency that provides an exceptional insurance product to professional insurance agents. Myron Steves, is a 50 year old Managing General Agent/Wholesaler with two divisions, Property and Casualty an Healthcare. For more information, visit www.myronsteves.com.

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