SAN JOSE: The Information Technology department of office of the Provost University at Southern California (USC) successfully implemented Sonasoft's SonaSafe solution to protect the Exchange server. Sonasoft provides a one-stop shop for the backup, high availability and disaster recovery needs of the office of Provost.

They used tapes as a backup medium, which they found to be unreliable and time-consuming. It was taking them hours and sometimes a full day to restore the backups. Also, they were looking for an integrated solution that would help with backup, recovery and high availability. Following a careful investigation and research, USC deployed SonaSafe for Exchange for such programmes.SonaSafe's point and click technology has made life easier for USC's IT staff. It is very easy to create plans for backup, recovery and also replication.

USC particularly likes the web console because it is user-friendly, easy to navigate and can be accessed from anywhere via a VPN tunnel. Sonasoft has not only cut back on the time it took them to backup and recover, but it has also given the IT staff peace of mind because now they are able to failover to the replicated server with just a few points and clicks. Sonasoft's ability to recover single emails or folders in a matter of seconds or minutes is particularly appealing, as compared to hours or a day of time that they found quite common using other backup software.

"The replication feature that Sonasoft offers is better than the competition. I not only depend on the replicated server at the DR site for business continuity, but I can also use it for maintenance purposes. I can now check my replication by failing over just one mailbox so I know it is working. This was something that really attracted me to Sonasoft", said Ali Sadr, Computer Systems Director, Office of the Provost, USC.