Goodwill Industries of North Georgia

Protecting the Data that Drives Goodwill*

Server backup and recovery is LiveVault’s specialty. Goodwill Industries International is a network of community-based organizations that serve people with workplace disadvantages and disabilities. With locations in the United States, Canada and 22 other countries, Goodwill helps people overcome barriers to employment and become independent, tax-paying members of their communities. To fund its operations, Goodwill collects donated clothing and household goods and sells them in more than 1,900 retail stores. Funds are also generated by providing contract labor services to business and government.

Goodwill Industries of North Georgia serves the greater Atlanta region and operates 9 stores in the area. "Those stores are the engine that drives our business," said Angela Staup, Director of Management Information Systems for Goodwill Industries of North Georgia. "The revenue from those stores fund our ability to offer rehabilitation to those in need."

Protecting the Server Data that Drives Goodwill
Goodwill Industries' 209 branch locations rely heavily on computer systems to drive their operations. As the person responsible for maintaining Goodwill Industries of North Georgia's computer systems, Staup understands the importance of effectively backing up and protecting the server data that drives the organization's retail stores and other operations. A server crash or other data loss event could bring their efforts to a standstill.

Staup maintains four servers with critical data, including:

• Financial Data–information relating to store revenue, grants, donations and other forms of funding. This data is especially important for fulfilling the reporting requirements Goodwill must meet every year to maintain its nonprofit status.
• Human Resources Data–payroll and other HR administrative data.
• Client Tracking Data–data critical to ensuring that all rehabilitation clients stay on course toward a brighter future of steady employment. Goodwill tracks the progress of each individual it serves.

Staup was not confident in Goodwill's ability to fully manage the tape-based backup system the organization was using. It was labor intensive and vulnerable to human error. Staup had to manually perform backups every business day, 52 weeks per year. She knew she needed a more reliable and less intrusive way to back up and recover information, but could not burden Goodwill's limited financial or personnel resources. She found the ideal solution in Iron Mountain's Electronic Vaulting, powered by LiveVault®.

Goodwill Industries of North Georgia now protects approximately 6.5 gigabytes of server data with Electronic Vaulting. The service ensures that the data is protected at all times by providing an automatic, fully managed server backup and recovery solution. All changes to business-critical files—such as e-mail and databases—are continuously transmitted across the Internet and securely stored off-line and offsite in an Iron Mountain vault. Goodwill can now restore server data in a matter of minutes, and right up to moments before a data loss event.

"You never want a single point of failure in an IT operation—even when
that single point is yourself. Even though I was extremely diligent about doing backups, I was not 100 percent certain that the tapes would perform properly in the event of a recovery."

"Our previous tape-based backup system was the source of constant concern for me, because I was solely responsible for doing the server backups—and that meant coming into the office on holidays, weekends and other times when you'd prefer to be elsewhere," Staup said. "You never want a single point of failure in an IT operation—even when that single point is yourself. Even though I was extremely diligent about doing backups, I was not 100 percent certain that the tapes would perform properly in the event of a recovery."

By migrating Goodwill Industries of North Georgia's server backup and recovery to Electronic Vaulting, Staup has eliminated the risks associated with in-house tape-based backup. By selecting a managed service, she has freed herself from the burden of managing the server backups for the organization, as they are now performed automatically, and are monitored 24x7.

"Electronic Vaulting has exceeded all of my expectations," Staup said. "It's a big relief to not have to worry about server backup anymore."

* Iron Mountain Data Recovery Success Story