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Schools Graduating to Best-in-Class Data Protection With Double-Take(R)

Posted on: Tuesday, 29 November 2005, 09:00 CST

World's most trusted and utilized data protection software proving to be a cost effective, easy-to-use solution for educational institutions with limited resources

Many of today's educational institutions, both universities and K-12 schools, are as reliant on electronic data and information technology (IT) systems as the most sophisticated businesses. As a result, these innovative schools are choosing to protect their data and applications with Double-Take(R) from NSI Software, Inc. (NSI(R)), the most relied upon solution for continuous data protection and application availability. Working with several of the industry's largest Education Technology Solution providers, NSI has deployed Double-Take at thousands of educational institutions worldwide, such as Suffolk University and Smithtown Central Schools.

"We are seeing an increasing number of educational institutions - from local school districts to large universities - turn to us for data protection solutions to protect their geographically dispersed classrooms and offices," said Julie Smith, higher education director, CDW-G. "Double-Take allows schools to efficiently and cost-effectively manage data back-up from a centralized location - enabling continuous replication and recovery. Through our partnership with NSI, CDW-G is able to offer schools the centralized data protection solutions they request."

Schools today resemble high-end data centers, with most classrooms having multiple PCs and each school or campus having at least two servers. In larger school districts and universities, the number of systems can range into the hundreds and sprawl across geographically disperse locations. Despite this growing complexity, universities and local school districts' technology environment is typically served by a small, centralized IT staff with limited resources. The most common challenge facing this IT staff is how to cost effectively protect the school system from data loss or system failure. With Double-Take, schools and universities can replicate data using patented compression and bandwidth mechanisms, from remote schools back to a central data center where they can perform backups. This eliminates the need for tape drives at each school or campus, and mitigates the risk of local non-technical personnel swapping tapes and cleaning cartridges. By centralizing back up with Double-Take schools reduce the costs and risk of losing valuable data.

"Our servers house critical data and applications such as student records, payroll, human resources, budget, accounts payable, food services, transportation, scheduling and inventory. Double-Take helps keep this information continuously protected from a central location, and also provides our small IT staff with a streamlined approach to information management," said Peter Mastrangelo, network specialist, Smithtown Central Schools. "We ran a simulated disaster recovery test on Double-Take this weekend, and it seamlessly recovered all our data and applications - within minutes. For a price that was well within our school budget, Double-Take makes life easier for our IT staff, it safeguards our school system and provides all of us peace of mind."

In addition, global "wired" campuses and sophisticated distance learning programs require 24x7 access to electronic data and IT systems to serve hard working students and online learning curriculum. For these institutions--along with smaller colleges and institutions of learning--Double-Take provides the ideal solution for data protection and application availability. The Double-Take solution:

-- Centralizes backup. With Double-Take, a single IT department can administer data backup and system failover campus or district -wide.

-- Is easy to use. With limited IT resources, schools need a solution like Double-Take that can be easily manipulated by users of limited technical sophistication.

-- Provides the most flexibility. Whether it's a distance learning infrastructure or back-office systems, Double-Take protects the data and ensures the availability of key applications.

"Double-Take enables us to go about business as usual, wherein certain unexpected service outages are essentially transparent to the students and faculty who use our online platform," said Dr. Praneeth Machettira, online technical director for Suffolk University Business School. "If a primary server goes down in Boston, we now have the capability to minimize the disruption to seconds. Double-Take provides a much needed buffer for our small IT staff."

About NSI Software

For organizations that depend on information, NSI Software, Inc. (NSI) provides the world's most relied upon solutions for continuous data protection and application availability. Its flagship product, Double-Take(R), is the most technically advanced software in the market and is the solution of choice for thousands of customers, from SMEs to over half of the Fortune 500. To assist in implementation, NSI offers a Professional Services team of Certified Business Continuity Planners who help architect, design and ensure a fail-safe continuous data protection plan. NSI also has strategic technical and marketing relationships with industry leaders including Microsoft(R), IBM(R), Dell(tm), HP(R) and Sungard(R), and works with its OEM partners and reseller channels to deliver comprehensive solutions and support to business users worldwide. Founded in 1991, NSI is privately held and headquartered in Hoboken, NJ. For more information, please contact NSI Software at www.nsisoftware.com.

Double-Take(R), GeoCluster(R) and NSI(R) are registered trademarks of NSI Software, Inc. Microsoft, Windows, and the Windows logo are trademarks, or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are properties of their respective Companies.

Source: Business Wire

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