Connexity - matching a strong storage program to a booming business

Customer Success Stories

A leading consumer research company with a global presence searches for an ideal way to protect and maintain its constantly expanding marketplace data and its internal information media.

October 22, 20198 mins

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Matching a strong storage program to a booming business

Challenge:

A leading consumer research company with a global presence searches for an ideal way to protect and maintain its constantly expanding marketplace data and its internal information media.

Value:

A streamlined, company-wide policy to protect, preserve and manage information
150 to 200 tapes stored offsite in state-of-the-art, controlled facilities
Five to seven tapes rotated every week
A full disaster recovery plan to ensure against the unthinkable
Adaptable resources for data recall and retention

A key player in the world of modern-day shopping, Connexity builds strong and lasting relationships between merchants and their consumers. Since its inception more than over 20 years ago, Connexity has helped brand and retail customers identify developing buyer trends and discover new and unexpected business targets through the use of innovative technological market platforms. An operator of several top shopping websites, Connexity has seen multiple acquisitions in the past few years, and the growing company employs approximately 300 people across several global locations, from Los Angeles to Karlsruhe, Germany

With so many offices and so much vital business and marketplace data to maintain, Connexity found itself confronting the question of how best to manage its information.

Our business runs off of the underlying data that's spread out throughout the different [units]" If that data were to disappear, then essentially our business would crumble.

Chris Hemphill, Senior Director, Infrastructure services

"Data management does get a little bit tricky as you look at integrating various business units, various acquisitions and trying to make sure that [you] have a consistent backup policy in place," Chris Hemphill, senior director of Connexity Infrastructure Services, observed.

In addition to the sheer scale of Connexity's operations and the daunting task of applying a company-wide data management policy to a global enterprise, data protection and disaster recovery was of utmost importance-especially where Connexity's main office in Los Angeles was concerned. Should an earthquake or any unforeseen event occur, both the "hard" market data (which represented the company's livelihood) and the"soft" organizational data needed for day-to-day business would beat risk. In the face of such a threat, Connexity was inspired to search for a data management plan that could accommodate the organization's wide-ranging footprint and offer complete business continuity.

Still, with an infrastructure network that spanned across several countries and a variety of data retention timeframes to consider, finding an appropriate method for protecting and managing information was a tall order. When deciding on an effective management plan, Connexityinfrastructure directors knew they wanted a secure, robust and affordable program that would offer comprehensive protection over extended periods of time. Keeping this in mind, the company chose to adopt a secure offsite storage plan to ensure its data would remain in the event of an office meltdown or another catastrophe. The organization likewise opted to store it shard and soft data using tape backup, a choice Connexity knew would provide added peace of mind because of its strong physical properties and widespread retention capabilities. Once a program was chosen, Connexity considered several possible data management vendors, but ultimately found the perfect third-party solution team in Iron Mountain.

Since joining forces with Iron Mountain, Connexity has newfound confidence in its overarching information management policy. Tape backup and secure offsite storage with Iron Mountain services - onboarded at sever allocations for maximum efficiency and organizational consistency - have proven both safe and reliable. "That's the upside [of tape]," Mr. Hemphill said of the program. "There's comfort in knowing that it's on a physical device that you can go and grab." Indeed, Iron Mountain's flexible and cost-effective tape backup plan allows Connexity to restore warehoused files to any of its locations should the need arise. At any given time, the company now stores between 150 and 200 tapes at Iron Mountain offsite facilities, and it rotates five to seven of these tapes every week - with no signs of slowing down. Should Connexity expand, the company's data management program can expand with it without putting any undue stress on in-house resources. Whatever the future holds for Connexity, Iron Mountain's offsite tape storage plan remains an essential business tool." We know it's effective, we know it's efficient and we know it's going to work," Mr. Hemphill said.

"Iron Mountain has the reputation for their facilities [and] staff"¦ that's why we chose Iron Mountain over several other vendors that [we] evaluated."