Arcserve Case Study

Arcserve Reduces Backup Windows andStreamlines Data Retrieval for First Securities

CLIENT PROFILE

Industry: Finance
Company: First Securities
Location: Taiwan

BUSINESSCHALLENGE

SOLUTION

BENEFIT

A wholly-owned
subsidiary of Taiwanbased First Financial
Holding, First Securities
is a full-service
brokerage firm.
Operating through its
parent company's 22
branches situatedthroughout the country,
First Securities provides
a portfolio of sharetrading services to its
retail customer base.

As First Securities'
operations grew during
the past decade, its
existing data backupinfrastructure was fallingbehind. Full backups weretaking more than 24 hours
to complete, and retrievalof files was taking hours.
The company needed abetter backup
infrastructure.

Arcserve Unified Data
Protection (UDP) Premium
Plus supports thecompany's fleet ofWindows, Linux and
Unix-based servers.
Incremental backups anddata replication ensure
data remains secure andavailable at all times.

With Arcserve UDP, First Securities
has reduced its backup times from
more than 24 hours to less thanan hour. Data retrieval times havealso been cut from hours to lessthan 15 minutes. Theseimprovements have significantlyenhanced the company's ability
to provide first-class customer
service.

Customer Success Story: First Securities

BUSINESSBUILDING A MARKET-LEADING SECURITIES FIRMFirst Securities, formerly Taisec Securities, has been trading as a securities brokerage firm since 1998. Following amerger in 2003 with the stock-broking unit of First Bank, it became the securities arm of First Financial Holding.
The company is focused on providing a range of brokerage services to its clients. These are delivered using a rangeof channels including physical branch locations, online trading platforms and an innovative smartphone application.
First Securities has a clear objective to increase its market share while maintaining its position as one of thecountry's leading full-service brokerage firms.

CHALLENGE
IMPROVING DATA MANAGEMENT FOR A GROWING BUSINESSIn the highly competitive financial services sector, rapid fulfilment of client requests and orders is vital. To achievethis, brokerage firms need to have a high-performance and stable IT infrastructure underpinning their daily activity.
Supporting its core applications and data stores, First Securities has a mix of both physical and virtual servers
running Windows, Linux and Unix operating systems. This infrastructure is supported by a company-wide data
backup system.
About 18 months ago, it became apparent that the existing backup system was no longer providing the level of
support required by the growing company. Backups were taking more than 24 hours to complete and data
recovery times could often be more than an hour.
The company also needed a way to replicate data between its main data centre and a second disaster recovery
facility in Taichung in real time. This would provide redundancy for operations and ensure no data was lost in theevent of an outage.
"We had reached the stage where our backup was simply not providing the level of support required by a trading
company," said Ym Chang, Senior Manager, First Securities. "If any problems occurred during the day, we could
only access data from the previous night's backup. This meant we could potentially lose hours of data which wassimply not acceptable."
If a major IT failure occurred, it could take more than half a day to retrieve data and get the trading systems backonline. This could result in significant disruption for customers and a loss of business for the company.
"Our trading systems and website require always-on availability during trading hours," said Chang. "Even a
15-minute downtime can create serious losses. We could not allow this as it could seriously affect our reputationand long-term business prospects."

Customer Success Story: First Securities

SOLUTIONAUTOMATED, INCREMENTAL SYSTEM STREAMLINES BACKUP PROCESS
After recognising the need to change its backup strategy, First Securities considered a range of replacement
options for its ageing Symantec solution. After rigorous analysis and testing, a decision was made to adopt
Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP) Premium Plus.
"Arcserve backup solutions are very popular in our industry, and our technology partner, Syscom, also
recommended this solution," said Chang. "We considered offerings from Symantec, Double-Take and Arcserve,
and the Arcserve solution was clearly the best fit for our requirements."
Chang said implementation of the new backup infrastructure was completed within three months andmission-critical data was quickly migrated. Links were established between the primary data centre and the DRfacility and real-time data replication was introduced.
"The implementation project was undertaken by our internal IT team supported by Syscom," said Chang.
"Everything was achieved without any disruption to our daily business operations."
Once an initial full backup of all data had been completed by the new Arcserve infrastructure, ongoing changes
were captured using an incremental backup process. Arcserve Global Deduplication feature helped to reduce thetotal amount of data being backed up.
"We also opted to undertake image rather than file backups which significantly reduced the required time," saidChang. "This allowed us to cut our overall backup times from 24 hours to less than one hour each day."First Securities' Arcserve backup infrastructure is now protecting five key servers that house around 4TB of data.
"These servers support our tier 1 applications and so must provide 24x7 service levels," said Chang. “I’m pleased
that we now have a solid, reliable backup solution in place."

We now have a single infrastructure thatprovides both backup to disk and replication
to our second data centre. It is easy to use,reliable and can scale to meet our future
requirements.
-- Ym Chang, Senior Manager, First Securities

Customer Success Story: First Securities

BENEFIT
REDUCED BACKUP WINDOWS AND FASTER DATA RETRIEVALWith the Arcserve backup solution now implemented and fully operational, First Securities is enjoying a range ofsignificant business benefits.
"We now have a single infrastructure that provides both backup to disk and replication to our second data centre,"said Chang. "It is easy to use, reliable and can scale to meet our future requirements."
Every transaction undertaken by the company is now replicated to its remote DR site instantaneously. Should anyproblems occur, operations can be switched to the second facility. Alternatively, data can be retrieved frombackups as required within 15 minutes.
By consolidating backup and replication tasks into a single console, management overheads have beensignificantly reduced. Rather than needing staff to maintain backups, all operations can now be completed by asingle person.
"One of our key criteria for the new infrastructure was that it should be easy to use," said Chang. "We have foundthe interface very intuitive and user friendly, which has also helped to reduce the need for staff training.""I am confident our Arcserve backup solution will provide us with the level of reliability and support that we require
to ensure we deliver first-class service levels to our clients at all times."

We also opted to undertake image rather
than file backups which significantly reduced
the required time. This allowed us to cut ouroverall backup times from 24 hours to lessthan one hour each day.
-- Ym Chang, Senior Manager, First Securities

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