Paraca Inc. decided to relocate its backup system from its Tokyo head office to its Osaka branch as part of a new business continuity plan. It also began using the SAP ERP software solution which required backups of those servers. To address these backup needs, Paraca adopted PlateSpin Forge which shortened backup times from 3 hours to 30 minutes and allowed Paraca to meet IT compliance requirements.
Axa Assurance Maroc - Insurer Innovation Award 2024
Paraca Inc.
1. Success Story
Paraca Inc.
spot colors:
Formerly, Paraca's administrative systems, including backup, were clustered at its
head office in Tokyo. As part of a new business continuity plan (BCP), the company
had decided to relocate its backup system to the Osaka branch. Meanwhile, Paraca
had begun using ERP, the business software solution from SAP. This meant the
servers running SAP ERP also needed to be backed up. As a solution to both of
these problems, the company decided to adopt PlateSpin Forge. Besides shortening
the backup process from 3 hours to 30 minutes, PlateSpin Forge has enabled
Paraca to meet the IT requirements for compliance with J-SOX (the Japanese
equivalent of the American Sarbanes-Oxley Act relating to corporate governance
and financial practice).
Overview
In line with its stated corporate mission of
"eliminating Japan's parking shortage and making
things comfortable for our motorized society,"
Paraca offers an array of parking lot operation
and management services, ranging from
consulting to financing and business
administration. Its company name is a mixture of
Spanish and English, hinting at two meanings:
"for cars" and "here are some parking spaces."
The issues involved
Paraca's signs feature a capital letter "P" with two
eyes. This "P" also has two meanings, standing for
both "parking" and "professional." The eyes also
have a double significance. As well as symbolizing
"site evaluation"—in the sense of meticulous
market surveys and property surveys—they also
symbolize "overseeing"—in the sense of operation
and management, including taking care of
cleaning, instrument problems and setting charges.
In the company's professional operation of parking
lots, the use of IT plays a vital role.
Paraca's mission-critical systems were running on
servers in a data center in the Tokyo area.
However, as part of its BCP, the company decided
to relocate its backup-and-restore environment to
the server room at its Osaka branch. Following
this decision, it was looking for an efficient backup
solution functioning between the Tokyo-area data
center and the Osaka-branch server room, which
were to be linked by an Internet virtual private
network (VPN).
In July 2010, Paraca also rebuilt its mission-critical
systems to revolve around SAP ERP. This created
the need for a SAP ERP system backup solution.
"We have SAP ERP running on five servers in our live
environment alone," says Mr. Hideyuki Nakamura, a
Systems Analyst at the company's Administration
Department, "and then there are our development
servers and our test servers and so on. Installing
standby machines at the Osaka branch to back up
all those servers was tough to do."
This was not the only problem. Paraca had set up
a backup-and-restore environment using
commercial software; however, the failure of a
physical server had to be handled by setting up
another physical server, configuring the OS and
applications, and then restoring the data from
backups. Because this task was so time-consuming,
the company needed a solution that would enable it
to swiftly recover from server failures.
"SAP ERP is not linked to our parking lot operation
system," points out Mr. Nakamura, "so even if SAP
ERP goes down, our parking lot services are not
interrupted. However, we are a listed company, so
any system outage could affect our perceived
reliability. That is why we needed a solution that
would get our administrative systems back up
quickly, even if the SAP ERP system is down."
Solution
In December 2010, looking to introduce a
backup-and-restore solution for its BCP and its
SAP ERP system, Paraca compared proposals
from several companies. As a result, it decided to
install PlateSpin Forge. Paraca chose this product
for a number of reasons. One was that it allows a
failure recovery test to be carried out with ease at
the click of a mouse, thanks to virtualization
technology. Its extensive track record in SAP ERP
backup was another.
Overview:
Paraca is engaged in parking lot operation
and management, consulting on the
operation and management of parking lots,
asset management and financing, and other
related services.
Industry sector:
Service
Location:
Japan
Novell products and services used:
PlateSpin Forge
Benefits:
– Backup process duration reduced from 3
hours to 30 minutes
– Paraca now meets IT requirements for
J-SOX compliance
– In the event of an equipment failure,
operations can be swiftly resumed
When I saw the PlateSpin Forge
demo at Novell's offices, I immediately
knew that this solution was right for
us. It was very reassuring to be able
to confirm that the product is easy to
use, and that in the event of an
equipment failure, we would be able
to recover with minimal downtime.
Mr. Teruhiko Iwamoto
Systems Analyst, Administration Department