UCG Webinar: BaaS (Backup as a Service) and Remote Hardware DR for IBM i and p Power Servers and Open Systems

You are cordially invited to join us for a Webinar:

BaaS (Backup as a Service) and Remote Hardware DR for IBM i and p Power Servers and Open Systems

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

2:00 PM - 2:40 PM EDT

REGISTER TODAY!

James A. Kandrac, President & Founder, United Computer Group, Inc. and Timothy Prostor, Senior Technical Engineer will educate and provide you and your team with the latest backup and DR options for IBM i and p Power Servers, and Open Systems.

Agenda items include:

• RTO/RPO options to fit any budget
• BaaS - Backup as a Service plus remote hardware DR for IBM i and p Power Servers & Open Systems (vSphere and Hyper-v)
• ERA (local) and dual PnP Appliance Options + DR
• Managed Service High Availability for < 1 hour RTO
• Review UCG's interactive Backup Selector
• Review of a client's IBM i Power and Open Systems backup requirements and retentions of 5 days, 4 weeks, 12 monthlies and 7 annuals - stored in two secure remote locations

IBM i Series - (24) Save Sets of 500GB would utilize over 12.5TB of tape - but only 190 GB with UCG's VAULT400

Intel - (24) Save Sets of 1TB of Intel data would utilize over 24TB of tape - but only 1 TB with UCG's VAULT400

Select the best options for your company and plan for Q4 2014 and 2015!

Reserve your Webinar seat now!

Space is limited.

Questions? Call 800.211.8798 or email info@ucgrp.com

Congratulations to UCG Client Cleveland Plant and Flower!

Longtime United Computer Group IBM Power Server client Cleveland Plant and Flower is celebrating their 101th anniversary! Founded in 1913 and located in Parma, Ohio, CP&F is one of the largest wholesale distributors of floral products in the United States. 

Kudos to Chuck Macuga, Kevin Priest, and the entire staff at CP&F. We wish you continued success!

Please enjoy their video, courtesy of cleveland.com. 

UCG Business Partner Optimum Solutions Chooses VAULT400 BaaS

United Computer Group, Inc. is pleased to announce that Optimum Solutions has chosen UCG’s VAULT400 BaaS as its backup and DR solution. VAULT400 BaaS provides cloud backup for Optimum’s multiple IBM i servers to ensure quick and reliable backup and restores. Their daily backup time has been cut from hours to minutes. Data backup is automated and encrypted throughout the process with only the user having access to the data.

VAULT400 BaaS was chosen by Dave Waters, Manager of IT Operations for Optimum Solutions, to backup mission-critical engineering development data on the IBM i. 

"Beginning in 2011 we started discussions with UCG on backup and DR solutions. At that time we were testing the waters with various backup methods to move our data from tape. Tape backup had become burdensome, and when we were ready to make the transition in 2014, VAULT400 BaaS was our solution of choice," says Dave. "We did our homework."

As B2B partners, UCG and Optimum Solutions have opened many doors to provide clients with complete HRIS and cloud backup and DR solutions. UCG's IBM i clients have strong support with their strategic partner in making payroll and HR management simple. Optimum Solutions clients have a proven backup and DR solution available to them for IBM i, Windows, VMware and all supported platforms with VAULT400 BaaS.

Cloud backup has become very competitive, but UCG has found their niche business as others have seen their doors shuttered. Focus on the IBM i and Open Systems from 10GB to >100TB coupled with disaster recovery options has proven UCG's strength in the market. 

Optimum Solutions is an industry software leader for Payroll, Human Resources and Time & Attendance. Their successful history in the HRIS software arena has placed them as an Inc. 500 award winner and named them one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S.

Request an Optimum Demo Sign Up For an Optimum Webinar VAULT400 BaaS & DR Proposal

Counting The Cost Of Power8 Systems

By Timothy Prickett Morgan, IT Jungle

"Now that IBM has put the four-core entry Power8 machine in the field to appease the processing and software group needs of a large portion of the IBM i installed base, it seems like now is a good time to finally get the price/performance analysis comparing Power7, Power7+, and Power8 machines out the door. There are many ways to dice and slice this, and I like to go through this methodically, as you all well know.

I have already compared the base system configurations in terms of their feeds, speeds, price, and raw value for dollar based on IBM's Commercial Performance Workload (CPW) online transaction processing benchmark test. These are but crude relative gauges of price/performance, I realize. That is why I also create comparisons that look at the price of raw processing capacity and the IBM i software license and support. That is what I have cooked up for this issue of The Four Hundred, to show you the cost of the inherent processing capacity separate from the system chassis and the memory, storage, and other peripherals that get added into the system. The next thing will be to look at how configured systems stack up using different generations of Power chips running IBM i and then to compare configured Power8 boxes to similarly configured machines equipped with Windows, Linux, and Unix as well as hypervisors and databases like IBM i offers."

Read full article.

United Computer Group is the IBM Power Systems hardware and services expert. We provide IBM Power Systems, IBM Blade Servers, equipment leasing, support, and more.

Learn about the new servers that are transforming the way we work. Call us at 800.211.8798 or email info@ucgrp.com to learn more!

IBM i Solution Edition for VAULT400

IBM Power 7+ Buy vs Lease PDF

The Benefits of IBM Power 7+ 

IBM Power7 - 720 Spec Sheet PDF

IBM Power Systems

IBM Blade Center

Express Servers and Storage

Maintenance Services

Business Continuity & Resiliency Services

Security Services

Annemarie Ashcraft Appointed National Account Manager for United Computer Group, Inc.

United Computer Group, Inc. is pleased to announce that Annemarie Ashcraft has joined the UCG management team as National Account Manager to further develop our growing portfolio of regional and national accounts. Annemarie will be responsible for leading sales efforts for UCG’s VAULT400 BaaS, remote hardware disaster recovery, and IBM Power Systems. She will also champion the development of UCG’s Referral Partner Channel for managed services.

Annemarie comes to UCG with a wealth of experience in IBM Power Systems i and p, having spent the last 23 years at Arrow Electronics, a longtime UCG vendor. Annemarie was UCG’s point of contact in her role as Account Manager at Arrow. Upon accepting her new role, Annemarie stated “I am excited to begin a new challenge within UCG and look forward to working with the team to further develop their already impressive product and service offerings. I feel fortunate to be joining a well-respected company that prides itself on delivering top notch technology products and services, and customer service excellence. Having worked with UCG for many years, I feel at home already!”

Annemarie will report directly to James A. Kandrac, President and Founder of United Computer Group, who said “Annemarie’s experience and industry knowledge has already made her a key addition to the UCG family. The increasing demand from our clients led us to look for an experienced, motivated individual who will fit in with our corporate culture and philosophy of providing high quality solutions and exceptional service to fulfill this role.” 

Annemarie graduated from the University of North Texas with a BBA in Strategic Business Management. She lives in Westlake, Ohio with her husband Steve and 17 year old son.

Annmarie can be reached directly at 216.520.5163, toll free at 800.211.8798 ext. 198, or via email at ama@ucgrp.com.

Please join us in welcoming Annemarie to United Computer Group!

UCG Grows BaaS Biz with VAULT400

By Dan Burger, Vice President and Executive Managing Editor, IT Jungle 

Cloud-based backup and recovery services and remote hardware for disaster recovery and high availability continues to attract IBM midrange shops and United Computer Group has become a trusted partner with many of them. Last week, the Cleveland, Ohio-based company announced two more companies that have decided to contract with UCG for what is being referred to as backup as a service, or BaaS.

Carswell, a provider of information services for legal, tax, finance, and human resource professionals based in Canada, and the city of San Ramon, California, are the latest in a string of organizations choosing to work with UCG. IT Jungle has been keeping an eye on the new business wins for the vaulting champion. The "Related Stories" links at the bottom of this article will lead you to other UCG business wins.

Before coming to a conclusion on its backup and recovery strategy, Carswell investigated its options placing an emphasis on ensuring its data could be safely backed up in the cloud. Among the requirements were yearly Auditors Letter for SSAE 16 SOC II Type II and full compliance with HIPAA/HITECH regulations.

The UCG service, referred to as VAULT400, met that criteria and is now deployed to provide daily automated backups to the cloud via encrypted data sent nightly to two UCG data centers, one in Cleveland and the other in Atlanta, Georgia.

San Ramon, a growing municipality of 90,000 residents located 25 miles from Oakland, considers itself a technologically progressive city. It has an electronic customer service program in place and also a mobile app as a way for residents to submit requests to the city. An IBM 9407-515 server is trusted to store and process sensitive employee and resident information.

IT manager Rick Maria reviewed several data backup options before choosing UCG to protect the system's mission-critical DB2 and IFS files with VAULT400 with backup to the above-mentioned data centers.

James A. Kandrac, Founder & President
United Computer Group, Inc.

San Ramon is also making use of VAULT400 Reports, a Web-enabled interface for reporting the details of its cloud-based data protection plan that includes encrypted nightly backups and immediate access to its data.

When it comes to hosted services, backup and recovery is the most popular choice for IBM i shops. Managed service providers are filling the demand.

"We see a revenue shift from the traditional buy/sell business to 'the cloud' and managed services," says UCG president Jim Kandrac. From June 2013 to June 2014, Kandrac says UCG net monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from backup as a service and remote hardware recovery has increased more than 33 percent. He says UCG is on track to double MRR every three years.

RELATED STORIES

UCG Launches VAULT400 Reports

Two More Customer Wins for Vault400

Medical Supply Firm Protects Data with Vault400

UCG Lauded for Test Work by VAULT400 Customer

VAULT400 to Protect Food Service Company

Manufacturer Taps VAULT400 for Cloud Backup

Mountains Of Data Bring Recovery Issues

Dan Burger

By Dan Burger, Vice President and Executive Managing Editor, IT Jungle 

If IBM pushed any harder on promoting "The Cloud," it would rain for 40 days and 40 nights. Investments have been made in technologies such as PowerVM, SmartCloud management products, and Live Partition Mobility. And you can't undervalue the investments from the managed service providers (MSPs) and the independent software vendors (ISVs).

"We see a revenue shift from the traditional buy/sell business to 'the cloud' and managed services," says Jim Kandrac, who makes his living selling cloud-based backup and recovery services and remote hardware for disaster recovery and high availability. Kandrac's business model relies a combination of IBM Power Systems and Intel servers to handle the managed service business he refers to as backup as a service (BaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). His company, United Computer Group (UCG), is equipped to handle online backups of databases from 10 GB to 100 TB.

From June 2013 to June 2014, Kandrac says UCG net monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from backup as a service and remote hardware recovery has increased more than 33 percent. He says UCG is on track to double MRR every three years.

This doesn't prove MSPs are getting more disaster recovery business than any

other kind of cloud-based business, but it is another piece of evidence that BaaS is lifting the cloud. MSPs consider disaster recovery as the gateway to the software as a service and the lucrative services business.

"We've been doing backup and recovery for eight years," Kandrac says. "There

James A. Kandrac, Founder & President
United Computer Group, Inc.

has always been a situation where the IBM i people were doing their thing and the AIX and Windows people were doing what they do. Now we are getting calls from mostly IBM i people who have had some bad experiences on the Intel side. Things didn't work as advertised. Too much pipe, too much data, problems compressing data, and trouble connecting to the remote location are some of the problems we've heard from the Intel side. Our business has improved because of this."

The challenge on the Intel side has not been on with archiving, but on restoring because companies that used to have gigabytes of data are now breaking into the terabyte range. Several terabytes of data (what Kandrac estimates is reality for 85 percent of his customers) are unable to restore in a timely matter unless they move to a high availability environment, which for some companies is a great idea, but for a lot of companies is overkill. Kandrac says hybrid solutions using solid state disk will be the way this problem is solved of getting 24-hour restores (what most UCG customers require) without the cost (almost double) of HA. It's happening now, but it's not commonplace. As companies increase from 4 TB to 8 TB to 12 TB of data, at the current capability levels of rebuilding data, the 24-hour recovery is unattainable.

"The trend I see is that the Intel guys are talking to the i guys because the Intel guys tried something that didn't work," he says.

That's opening the door for companies like Kandrac's that can do both.