Friday, March 27, 2015

Global tube and packaging supplier Unette Corp. selects UCG’s VAULT400 BaaS

We're pleased to announce that Unette Corporation, headquartered in Randolph, NJ, has selected UCG’s VAULT400 Baas as their cloud backup provider.

Unette Corporation’s IT manager, Christopher Doscher, conducted a lengthy search before choosing VAULT400 BaaS to protect business-critical data on their IBM Midrange System. With VAULT400, they are now backing up daily, weekly, and monthly in addition to their annuals. The data is compressed, encrypted and sent to UCG's secure, off-site, HIPAA compliant data center in Cleveland, Ohio as well as their data center in Atlanta, Georgia for a second replication.

With VAULT400, data is available for immediate, user-initiated restore 365x24x7. In the event of disaster, Unette will receive Hardware Disaster Recovery Quick Ship free of charge from United Computer Group, Inc.

About Unette Corporation

Unette Corporation, the originator of single-use tubes, has produced tubes since 1955 and continues to increase its production capabilities. In the beginning flexible packaging was Unette’s only offering and continues to be a strong part of its sales today.

Unette has also expanded into the European market, establishing an exclusive licensing agreement with Packaging Services Unette, Ltd. in Manchester, England. The new facility opened under the name Unette European Operations.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

One Minute Video: Intro to UCG's VAULT400 BaaS Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery Solution

UCG's VAULT400 BaaS is a premier managed risk mitigation and business continuity planning service that “fills the gap” between tape backup and high availability. VAULT400 backs up an entire organization’s business-critical data to secure data centers, ensuring financial, HIPAA, and legal compliance for their clients. Safe and off-site, the encrypted data is available online at all times for immediate, user-initiated recovery. VAULT400 works seamlessly within an organization’s existing infrastructure while supporting all platforms and databases.

In addition, UCG offers remote hardware disaster recovery. Select the required time for recovery of operations and we will present a complete offering to meet your needs.

Contact UCG today at 800.211.8798, or email info@ucgrp.com

Can your business afford to wait?  




CLICK HERE

Thursday, March 12, 2015

The Future of Enterprise Management Software Has Arrived

UCG’s technology roadmap, our shared vision with VAI and IBM, provides companies with a business model based on best industry processes that leverages technology to create and improve performance.

Enterprise Management Software (EMS) products include solutions for Distribution, Manufacturing, and Multi-Channel Retail with industry specific features for Apparel, Durable Goods, Food and Pharmaceutical. In addition, web based software provides mobile access enabling every user in the organization immediate anytime, anywhere computing.

These feature-rich supply chain and business management software solutions can improve your company's internal efficiencies and external responsiveness while delivering bottom-line results.

With the introduction of the S2K Smart Center, our customers can compete at a very high level, and by leveraging the flexibility and mobility that the web provides they have unlimited growth potential.

Request Demo

Download brochures 

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

IBM Engines of the Week: Colocation Solution Keeps Insurer Online Amid Hurricane Sandy's Wrath

Though the IT team at Newark, NJ-based International Fidelity Insurance Company (IFIC) had rehearsed its disaster recovery scenario with precision, the team couldn't have anticipated an event that would take out power, roads and communications across a wide swath of the mid-Atlantic coast. When Hurricane Sandy hit in October, 2012, the disaster recovery team had to fail over to a co-location site with the clock ticking on its uninterruptible power supply and no phone service.

Watch this podcast to see how with the guidance from IBM partner United Computer Group, IFIC avoided nearly $2 million in lost revenues and learned valuable lessons to help it prepare for future incidents.




Wednesday, March 04, 2015

UCG And Expedient Partner For Expanded IBM i Hosted Services

By Dan Burger, IT Jungle

United Computer Group built a trustworthy reputation alongside its growing IBM midrange customer base by offering online backup services. It also offered disaster recovery services to organizations that have figured out the limitations of their downtime survival endurance. UCG has made the investments in equipment and staff to deliver service that meets high expectations, and now it's taking the next step.

Expedient, a company with 11 data centers in seven markets from Chicago eastward, including the northeast regions of the United States, and UCG decided they could use one another's help, so they formed a partnership.

Expedient provides colocation services--rack, power, and pipe--along with utility processing, backup as a service (BaaS), and disaster recovery primarily for X86 servers. The company has some IBM i on Power in their data center, business that has come along with some X86 customers, but the IBM i servers remain managed by the customers. When more companies wanted the option of having their IBM i servers managed as a service, Expedient brought in UCG to handle that business.

"Expedient's foot-print in the Midwest and on the East Coast is 'significant,'" says Jim Kandrac, president of UCG. "We have worked on getting to know one another over the past several years and things just progressed naturally."

Kandrac explained that IBM i customers with servers in Expedient's data centers are doing tape backups, but UCG's BaaS will be a cost effective alternative that is expected to have a high adoption rate. Expedient expects to expand it backup and recovery business for X86 servers and that will bring some additional IBM i business with it. With UCG onboard, Expedient can provide service for both platforms when its customers are looking for an all-in-one service provider.

Kandrac points out that UCG also does backup and recovery for X86, but it doesn't seek that business. UCG does it for IBM i shops that want to bring X86 along with the i-centric services UCG provides. Colocation services has not been part of the UCG offerings, but now when IBM i shops mention it, UCG has an answer.

UCG has its operations in Cleveland in a data center owned by BlueBridge Networks, a company that, like Expedient, does most of its business in the X86 arena, according to Kandrac. UCG also makes use of a second data center in Marietta, Georgia.

Expedient also has data centers in Cleveland. UCG will have servers in data centers owned by both Expedient and BlueBridge.
The two data centers Expedient operates in Cleveland are connected to the other nine data centers the company owns. One of the Cleveland data centers will provide redundancy for the IBM i and storage area networks (SANs) UCG has at BlueBridge Networks.
UCG is also expanding its services beyond the backup and recovery expertise that has resulted in an IBM i customer base totaling 150 organizations. The new capabilities include services surrounding development, test, and production environments.

Kandrac says his company has slowly grown into hosting those environments. It has developed as the client-vendor relationship has developed dependability and trust. In the managed services business, it's nearly impossible to overestimate the value of trust.

"Customer demand is pushing this," Kandrac says. The journey began with BaaS. Then the DR element became important and the recovery time decreased to 24 hours and 12-hours and we also became a managed high availability service provider.

"Over the past three years, UCG has invested significantly in staffing and systems and we are poised to continue to have a 'controlled growth' of 25 percent to 35 percent per year in the managed services arena."
RELATED STORIES
Vaulting Service Replaces Mirroring For IBM i Shop
IBM i Shops Climb Into the VAULT
IBM i Shops Turn to Vault400 for Protection
UCG Grows BaaS Biz with VAULT400
Mountains Of Data Bring Recovery Issues
UCG Champions Technology Upgrade
Two More Customer Wins for Vault400