Adams Outdoor Advertising

Securing its Image with LiveVault Data Recovery

Customer Challenge:
To ensure the recovery of its extensive database of business-critical advertising data.

Adams Outdoor advertising is the sixth largest provider of outdoor billboard advertising in the U.S. In the advertising business, a company's past accomplishments are paramount to securing future business. Prospective clients need to see the results that an advertising campaign has secured. For Adams Outdoor Advertising, they have a bevy of past campaigns that they love to point their prospective customers to because of their success. However, this information all resides on the company's server, and to lose any of that information would cripple the company.

"This electronic data is our lifeblood. Our server holds critical customer information, details on our campaigns, advertising pictures, inventory, as well as everything from billing and accounting to marketing information," said Ron Lewis, Controller of Adams Outdoor Advertising. "Not only that, but our data is constantly changing and growing. If we lost any of this information, it would seriously compromise our ability to effectively do business."

"When I tell people about the benefits of this service, they don't believe me, because it sounds too good to be true."

Adams Outdoor knew that it needed an effective data recovery and protection plan, to ensure against significant data loss in the event of a disaster. The company previously used tape-based backup, but quickly learned the pitfalls of such a system. One day, Lewis tried to restore information from a tape, but discovered that the restore didn't work. Thus, the most recent backup was days old, and critical data had to be recreated. Adams Outdoor then tried a nightly offsite automated backup system, but Lewis soon became frustrated with this method as well.

Seeking Data Assurance and Guaranteed Restores
"We needed a critical file for our quarterly financial records, but were not able to restore it," said Lewis. "I called up the service provider, but no one answered their phone. When I finally reached someone, I discovered that the whole company was shut down for two weeks over the July 4th holiday, and this particular employee didn't have access to the system to restore our file. I couldn't believe that a service provider would leave us hanging like that."

Following these setbacks, Adams Outdoor started to look for a new, reliable backup and data recovery option. Adams Outdoor wanted a service that worked on a continuous, rather than nightly basis, as well as a service that could guarantee restorability. The company was referred to LiveVault Corporation from two different sources.

"I have a friend in the banking industry, who also has significant amounts of business-critical electronic data, and she recommended that I look at the LiveVault Online Backup and Data Recovery Service," said Lewis. "I was impressed. A short while later, our corporate office also suggested that we consider LiveVault. Many backup vendors promise reliability, but to hear the benefits of the service first-hand from real users made a difference."

The LiveVault Online Backup and Recovery Service automatically protects all of Adams Outdoor's electronic data by continuously backing it up via a secure Internet connection and storing it in an offsite vault for on demand data recovery. The data is then immediately available for recovery in the event of a server crash, human error, virus or disaster.

Disaster Averted
Adams Outdoor has had to do two major restores since implementing LiveVault's service. The first disaster wiped out several years of accounting data; the second eliminated all of the charting system information for one of Adams Outdoor's locations.

Lewis said, "Every time I think about a few of those restores, I thank LiveVault. If we were to lose that information, I don't know what we would do. With LiveVault, I was able to quickly recover all of the lost information in less than five minutes."

In addition to the fast and guaranteed restores, Lewis is also impressed by the support that LiveVault offers to its customers. He receives a call from LiveVault if ever the connection between the server and the vault goes down, even if it's on his end, such as with a power outage. Lewis also says that the MyLiveVault Web Management Portal is easy-to-use and he appreciates that the service allows him to go back in time and view the history of a document.

"When I tell people about the benefits of this service, they don't believe me, because it sounds too good to be true," said Lewis. "LiveVault guarantees the integrity and restorability of our data. I would recommend this service to anyone—it's the best that I've ever seen."