Symantec Business Value Study. Meredith Corporation. Backup and Recovery, High Availability, Storage Management, and Archiving and e-discovery

Transcription

1 Symantec Business Value Study Meredith Corporation Backup and Recovery, High Availability, Storage Management, and Archiving and e-discovery

2 Tables of Contents Executive Summary 4 Overview 4 Barriers 4 Solution 4 Benefits 4 About Meredith Corporation 5 Business Drivers 5 Ensure Accessibility 5 Manage IT Infrastructure Growth 6 Improve Organizational Productivity 6 Enhance End-user Productivity 6 Reduce Storage Costs 7 Conserve Data Center Space, Power, and Cooling 7 Technology Challenges 7 Support Heterogeneous Storage and Servers 7 Standardize Storage Management 7 Standardize and Centralize Remote Backup and Recovery 7 Ensure High Application Availability 7 Streamline Discovery 8 IT Transformation 8 Action Plan and Decision Process 8 Centralize Storage Management 8 Standardize Backup and Recovery 9 Improve System Availability 9 Streamline Archiving and Discovery 9 Consolidate Remote Backups 10 Conserve Leveraging Data Center Space, Power, and Cooling Initiatives 11 Implementation Approach and Timetable 11 Network Architecture 11

3 Tables of Contents Key Business Value 12 Data Storage Utilization Cost Avoidance 13 Table 1: Storage Utilization Cost Avoidance 13 Server Management Benefits 14 Table 2: Server Management Productivity Gains 14 Backup Labor Cost Avoidance 15 Table 3: Backup Labor Cost Avoidance 15 Application High Availability Cost Avoidance 16 Table 4: Reduced Downtime from Application Availability 16 Table 5: Server Cost Avoidance and Labor Savings 17 Storage Savings 17 Table 6: Archiving and Data Compression Storage Savings 18 IT Help Desk and End-user Productivity Improvements 18 Table 7: IT Help Desk Productivity Gains 19 Table 8: End-user Productivity Gains 19 e-discovery Labor Savings 20 Table 9: e-discovery Labor Savings 20 Remote Backup Savings 21 Table 10: Remote Location Data Backup Labor and Equipment Savings 22 Conclusion 23 Notes 23

4 Executive Summary Overview Meredith Corporation is a leading United States marketing and media company. Its vast portfolio includes 23 subscription magazines, 12 television stations, 150 special-interest publications, approximately 400 books, 32 Web sites, and an 85 million record consumer-marketing database. Information Technology (IT) plays a critical role in helping manage these varying business assets while enabling new strategic asset acquisition and business exploration opportunities. Barriers Because of acquisitions, the Meredith IT team utilizes a decentralized infrastructure comprising heterogeneous hardware and software solutions in dozens of United States locations. Unaddressed, this system diversity and geographic distribution can constrain employee productivity, create operational risk, and potentially threaten operational stability all of which incurs higher business costs. The company s transition from print-centric operations to digital media deliverables also has generated storage management issues, including daunting backup-and-recovery challenges. Further exacerbating these challenges are Meredith s newly envisioned data center and its associated initiatives. The latter include space and power constraints, cooling conservation, and server virtualization. Solution Meredith began using Symantec storage management solutions in the late 1990s, initially deploying Veritas Storage Foundation for UNIX file system and storage volume management. As its Des Moines data center operations expanded, Meredith added Veritas Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC and Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows. In 2002, Meredith standardized backup and-recovery operations on Veritas NetBackup and rolled out Veritas Cluster Server to improve application availability. In 2005, it deployed Symantec Enterprise Vault for archiving and e-discovery, leveraging Symantec Consulting Service for implementation support. In 2007, Meredith added Veritas NetBackup PureDisk to centralize remote office backup-and-recovery operations. Benefits Consequent to its Symantec solutions and relationship, Meredith has gained substantial, sustained business advantage. To quantify this business value, an analysis was conducted in the following areas: Storage Utilization Improvements: $610,575 in storage volume savings with Storage Foundation from January 2002 through December 2009 Sever Management Productivity Gains: $5,909,409 in labor productivity gains related to less time spent on server administration tasks from January 2004 through December 2009 Backup Labor Productivity Cost Avoidance: $2,093,696 in realized and projected labor productivity gains through improved backup efficiencies from January 2002 through December 2009 Downtime Cost Avoidance: $5,250,000 in business revenue cost avoidance from the reduction in unplanned downtime from January 2004 through December 2009 Cluster Server Cost Avoidance and Labor Savings: $1,563,716 from hardware cost avoidance and IT labor savings with N+1 clustering and reduced server administration from January 2003 through December

5 Storage Savings and Cost Avoidance: $2,085,525 in storage savings related to less expensive archive storage and data compression from January 2005 to December 2009 IT Help Desk Productivity Gains: $113,061 in IT productivity gains through in faster end-user issue resolution from September 2005 through December 2009 e-discovery Labor Savings: $631,406 in labor productivity savings related to reducing the amount of time to organize information requests from September 2005 through December 2009 Remote Location Tape Library Savings: $1,160,283 in administrative and labor savings through remote office backup using Veritas NetBackup PureDisk from November 2007 through December 2009 About Meredith Corporation Edwin Thomas Meredith founded Meredith Corporation (NYSE:MDP) in 1902 by publishing Successful Farming magazine. Today, Meredith Corporation is a leading United States media and marketing company operating magazine publishing, book publishing, television broadcasting, integrated marketing, and interactive media businesses. Headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, the company employs more than 3,500 people. Major remote offices are in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC and co-located with 10 of its geographically distributed television stations. In addition to traditional print and broadcast channels, Meredith produces additional revenues by integrating and leveraging core business assets and activities across multiple media platforms. Consequently, supporting digital content creation, data management, and data distribution are primary IT organization activities. Meredith has 80 people on the central Des Moines corporate IT team and 75 additional IT staff on the support and application develop teams. With 20 remote offices to support, Meredith CIO Brad Wyckoff continuously seeks more efficient and cost-effective ways to manage and automate the company s IT environment. Fact File on Meredith Corporation Founded: 1902 Headquarters: Des Moines, Iowa Ownership: Public (NYSE: MDP) Sector: Media Market: National 2008 Revenue: $1.6 billion Full-time Employees: 3,500 Website: Business Drivers Ensure Accessibility Beyond its more than 3,500 employees, Meredith s greatest business-critical asset is the creative content its employees and business partners generate using a spectrum of operating systems and personal workstations, including personal Apple Macintosh systems. To share and subsequently access this content, Meredith s employees and external customers must be able to access these server systems. Hence, Meredith s foremost IT infrastructure requirement is accessibility comprising system, application, and data accessibility. This requirement applies to daily operations, disaster recovery, new acquisition integration, and new business-initiative support. 5

6 We create content, and we need to manage that content. On that note, we need to be able to effectively distribute that content across multiple platforms. Brad Wyckoff CIO, Meredith Corporation Meredith s numerous remote offices once employed varying storage management, backup-and-recovery, and application support methodologies. By requiring specialized skill sets and separate training, these differing solutions collectively precluded IT labor productivity and flexibility. As one example, two dedicated, full-time employees managed backups for 150 servers. Since Meredith s backup volumes annually increased by approximately 70 percent, without revising backup-and-recovery methodologies, they needed to continuously increase IT resources just to manage backups. The remote data center operational disparity made centralized systems management difficult, potentially threatening increased downtime and reduced enduser productivity. For example, a catastrophic 2007 steam pipe explosion occurred immediately outside a primary Meredith Manhattan editorial location. The ensuing building evacuation and subsequent inability to access the facility temporarily rendered the location s data center and publishing content inaccessible to hundreds of Meredith employees. This event highlighted the advantages of developing a centralized disaster recovery (DR) plan that would reduce Meredith s business continuity risks. Manage IT Infrastructure Growth Meredith servers have increased from 150 in 2002 to more than 400 today, and their data volume has grown to 40 terabytes (TB) a 400 percent increase since late Managing continuous digital content growth without increasing IT headcount, as well as finding solutions that continue supporting rapidly growing backup and data volumes, has proven challenging. Moreover, with severe existing data center growth constraints, the Meredith IT team faced the daunting task of building a new data center that incorporated contemporary space, power, cooling, and server virtualization considerations. Improve Organizational Productivity Meredith s decentralized data center approach unnecessarily consumed significant IT staff resources, both at the Des Moines corporate headquarters and at remote locations. As example, expanding Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulatory compliance requirements, coupled with rapid volume growth, absorbed increasing amounts of IT personnel time, as did their accompanying e-discovery and compliance-related tasks. Enhance End-user Productivity Meredith s end users typically spent up to 30 minutes a week managing . In addition, most IT help desk support calls were -related, helping end users manage Microsoft Exchange mail box quotas. Meredith needed to remediate these growing productivity impediments. 6

7 Reduce Storage Costs Meredith s transition from print-based media to digital-based media required continuously growing storage resources. These include constrained tieredstorage subsystem capacity as well as incurred associated administration costs. The Meredith team concluded it needed solutions that optimized existing storage resource utilization in ways that enabled it to fulfill future requirements. Conserve Data Center Space, Power, and Cooling Supporting Meredith s digital media growth consumed data center space and threatened to exhaust power and cooling capabilities. Before transitioning to a new data center, the IT team realized they needed to reduce costs while maintaining an infrastructure that sustained projected company growth. Data creation, data management, and data distribution are the largest issues we re facing today. With the pace of business, volumes, and the data intensity, finding more efficient, costeffective ways to manage that growth are the keys to our success. Brad Wyckoff, CIO, Meredith Corporation Technology Challenges Support Heterogeneous Storage and Servers Meredith s IT infrastructure integrates heterogeneous offerings from numerous hardware, software, and system vendors. These disparate components comprise its several client and server platforms, storage, storage area network (SAN), enterprise communication network, and application components. Operating systems include Solaris, Microsoft Windows, and Linux variants. Server systems include Sun and Dell servers. Storage systems include EMC Centera and CLARiiON. With the above in mind, Meredith determined that efficient and effective administration of these individual entities, aligned with Meredith s business goals, required a cohesive and standardized management methodology. Standardize Storage Management Since the late 1990s, Meredith had managed UNIX file systems and storage volumes using a centralized methodology it later extended to manage its Des Moines Microsoft Windows- and Linux-based systems. Meredith s present storage requirement, approximately 460TB, is growing approximately 70 percent annually. Hence, Meredith determined it needed to standardize centralized storage management across its entire enterprise IT infrastructure while improving the performance of an aging Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructure. Standardize and Centralize Remote Backup and Recovery The IT staff at Meredith s headquarters needed to reduce remote office tape drive and library costs and risk. Reducing the risk required transforming several existing remote server backup-and-recovery processes into a standardized methodology that increased IT productivity while supporting continually growing data volume growth. Simultaneously, to enhance remote server data recovery capabilities, the staff needed to centralize enterprise disaster recovery and off-site data archive operations. Ensure High Application Availability At the enterprise level, Meredith application availability suffered from its distributed data centers and remote location systems and applications. To ensure high availability and reliability for all business-critical applications, IT needed cost-effective methodologies to manage application availability and increase administrator efficiency 7

8 Streamline Discovery Meredith legal discovery requests regularly required IT staff to determine which archive data tapes involved specific issues, to find network storage space for restoring that information, and to restore the tape data tapes. This manual approach consumed considerable IT staff time that could be applied to higher-value uses. Hence, the IT team needed to find a more efficient means for archiving and searching . IT Transformation In the late 1990s, Meredith deployed Veritas Storage Foundation to manage UNIX file systems and storage volumes, laying the foundation for a long-standing Symantec relationship. Over a span of approximately six years under Wyckoff s direction, Meredith centralized and standardized on several Symantec software solutions including Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC, Storage Foundation for Windows, and Veritas NetBackup in September, With Symantec Consulting Services assistance, Wyckoff and his team added Veritas Cluster Server for centralized cluster management in October Then, in September 2005, facing the advent of more regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA, and PCI compliance, Wyckoff and his team opted to implement Symantec Enterprise Vault for archiving and management. They subsequently added Symantec Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator and Microsoft Exchange Journaling in the same month, for e-discovery and enhanced compliance. Most recently, in 2007, seeking to centralize remote office backup and recovery, the team deployed Veritas NetBackup PureDisk. I view Symantec as a key technology provider. The broad footprint of Symantec technology in the market is certainly beneficial to us. Brad Wyckoff, CIO, Meredith Corporation Various members of Wyckoff s team played a critical role in this transformation, including: David Coffman, UNIX Infrastructure Leader; Tony Messerschmidt, Microsoft Windows and VMware Infrastructure Lead; Mike Lacy, Director of Infrastructure; and Dan Carlson, Director of IT Security and Compliance. Action Plan and Decision Process Centralize Storage Management The initial Veritas Storage Foundation deployment occurred in the late 1990s when Meredith first used it to manage UNIX file systems and storage volumes. Veritas Storage Foundation allowed Meredith s IT team to grow and reallocate storage productively, increasing central data center Storage Area Network (SAN) storage operations. When Wyckoff arrived in 2002, he first centralized and standardized storage management across all server platforms and operating systems, introducing Veritas Storage Foundation Oracle RAC and Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows. While planning the new data center, he and his team found Veritas Storage Foundation critical to extending the life of its aging EMC CLARiiON storage infrastructure it had relied on for six years. Veritas Storage Foundation helped improve storage utilization by resizing files and volumes, reclaiming unused disk storage capacity and improving overall performance and reliability. 8

9 Standardize Backup and Recovery In addition to traditional storage management issues, Wyckoff immediately recognized the company s need to standardize and centralize backup and recovery. Reasons for the selection of NetBackup primarily revolved around its support for heterogeneous server and storage environments. Meredith s backupand-recovery architecture consists of one master Solaris server, four Solaris-based media servers, and one Microsoft Windows-based media server. This configuration now provides backup services for approximately 100 UNIX systems, more than 320 Microsoft Windows-based servers, and 10 Linux-based servers, as well as the company s many Macintosh computers. Having a standardized solution like Veritas NetBackup allowed us to grow without having the impact of additional resources and headcount. Mike Lacy, Director of Infrastructure, Meredith Corporation Improve System Availability After deploying Veritas NetBackup, Wyckoff and his team implemented Veritas Cluster Server in October This provided automated critical-application failover on physical and virtual servers within Meredith s Des Moines data center. Administrators are able to monitor, manage, and report on Meredith s clusters from a single web-based console and conduct disaster recovery tests without affecting the primary production environment. Wyckoff s team configured Meredith s clustered environment to exploit Veritas Cluster Server s N+1 roaming spare capability that does not require dedicating a spare server for each application. Veritas Cluster Server s advanced failover logic allows IT administrators to set server capacity failover policies so that when failures occur, Veritas Cluster Server selects the best server for an affected application based on the application s needs and the current state of cluster resources. We have confidence in Veritas Cluster Server. Just the other day we had a power outage that impacted a bunch of our really large file systems. I took reassurance knowing that we had Veritas Cluster Server in place. David Coffman, UNIX Infrastructure Leader, Meredith Corporation Streamline Archiving and Discovery In September 2005, with the assistance of Symantec Consulting Services, Wyckoff and his team embarked on an initiative to implement an archiving and e-discovery solution based on Symantec Enterprise Vault. Prior to the roll out, Wyckoff s IT team had a dedicated FTE tasked with performing manual discovery of archives, which at times included securing PST files from end-user laptops and desktops. The deployment of Symantec Enterprise Vault addressed several requirements for Meredith: Create a more cost-effective storage solution while eliminating quotas Reduce time spent by helpdesk responding to enduser management requests Provide effective archiving support for Macintosh content creation systems that represent critical intellectual property 9

10 The team then added Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator and Microsoft Exchange Journaling in order to provide the legal team with fast and secure access to all and to capture all transmissions. In conjunction with this effort, the Meredith team constructed policy-based methodologies to determine retention periods. The team also deployed Enterprise Vault Offline Vault to allow end users access to their archives from remote locations. Symantec Consulting Services worked with the Meredith IT team through the deployment to help ensure a successful implementation. We were just writing our PST files to the tape library, and when we would get requests from our legal department, we had to go and restore PST files scattered across multiple tapes it was obviously a very laborintensive exercises. We needed a better mechanism. Dan Carlson, Director of IT Security and Compliance, Meredith Corporation Consolidate Remote Backups In September 2007, following a successful proof of concept, Veritas NetBackup PureDisk was purchased to facilitate centralized backup and recovery for the company s 20 remote office locations. The solution was deployed in less than one week, and Meredith is now backing up 5TB of data to a Sun Solaris server in the data center instead of 31 individual Microsoft Windows-based servers scattered across the remote locations. The Symantec systems engineer worked with the Meredith team to roll out the solution. Meredith takes full advantage of NetBackup PureDisk s ability to communicate over low-cost telecommunication links. Following the initial snapshot of the systems, PureDisk utilizes a file fingerprinting process to identify unique files and file changes regardless of the operating system or location. These changes occur before any data is transmitted and allow Meredith to manage remote backups. The ability to eliminate duplication of data was an important requirement for Meredith in the technology selection process, and the IT team is leveraging the data de-duplication technology within PureDisk. The Meredith team relies on PureDisk s webbased interface and role-based access for ongoing management of remote location backup and recovery. The integration of PureDisk export to the NetBackup catalog also allows the Meredith team to maintain a consistent disaster recovery process across its storage environment. Enterprise Vault and PureDisk are probably the two most significant areas where Symantec has recently come to the forefront and are really helping us make significant strides. Brad Wyckoff CIO, Meredith Corporation 10

11 Conserve Leveraging Data Center Space, Power, and Cooling Initiatives In July 2006, Wyckoff and his team embarked on an initiative to virtualize their Microsoft Windows-based server environment, with the objective of conserving existing data center space, power, and cooling resources. Approximately two-thirds of the company s 330-plus Microsoft Windows-based servers run within a VMware-based virtualized environment, helping Wyckoff s team to maximize server capabilities while accelerating internal and external customer service deliveries. VMware Consolidated Backup technology in NetBackup played an important role in Meredith s move to a virtualized server environment. In short, the team was able to transition to a virtualized infrastructure without any changes to their backupand-recovery infrastructure. Overall, the Meredith team views Symantec technology as a key enabler of its focus on Green IT. Wyckoff cites three specific instances: Ability to improve storage utilization rates, and thus reduced storage requirements, using Storage Foundation De-duplication of remote-location data, and thus reduced storage requirements, using NetBackup PureDisk IT Evolution: Late 1990s January 2002 January 2002 October 2002 September 2005 November 2007 Deployed Veritas Storage Foundation for managing files systems and storage volumes Deployed Veritas NetBackup to standardize backup operations Deployed Veritas Storage Foundation Oracle RAC and Storage Foundation for Windows across all server platforms and operating systems Implemented Veritas Cluster Server for centralized cluster management Implemented Symantec Enterprise Vault with help of Symantec Consulting Services for archiving and e-discovery Deployed Veritas NetBackup PureDisk for centralized backup of remote offices Single-instance archiving of using Enterprise Vault Symantec is in lockstep with us as we move into building out this data center and is helping us achieve our strategies around data management and ensuring that our next-generation data center maximizes efficiency of the footprint. Brad Wyckoff CIO, Meredith Corporation We are consolidating our data management tools using Symantec products. This allows us to get our arms around our data volumes and the storage requirements which span our client, server and tiered storage systems. Brad Wyckoff CIO, Meredith Corporation 11

12 Meredith Corporation Data Center Architecture Veritas Storage Foundation is used to manage file systems and volumes across a heterogeneous storage environment. Veritas Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC is used to manage file systems and volumes associated with the Oracle RAC environment. Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows is used to configure, share, and manage storage for Microsoft Windows-based environment. Veritas Cluster Server is used to cluster business-critical systems for high availability, including N+1 clustering. SAN infrastructure includes EMC CLARiiON and EMC Centera storage systems Symantec Enterprise Vault enables users to store, manage, and discover unstructured information across the organization. Des Moines, Iowa headquarters and 20 remote locations with 3,500 employees; heterogeneous workstation networks include personal Apple Macintosh systems More than 400 Sun and Dell servers running Solaris, Microsoft Windows, and Linux variants. Veritas NetBackup provides backup and recovery for UNIX-, Linux-, and Microsoft Windows-based servers and various storage systems and arrays. Veritas NetBackup PureDisk uses data deduplication and integration with NetBackup to enable centralized data protection for 20 remote locations. Key Business Value Symantec technologies have played and are continuing to play an important role in the different IT transformation initiatives overseen by Wyckoff and his team. This study quantifies realized and projected business value in the following areas: Storage utilization cost avoidance Server management labor productivity Backup labor cost avoidance Application high availability cost avoidance Server clustering and management savings IT helpdesk productivity improvements End-user productivity improvements e-discovery labor savings Remote backup tape and labor savings For the business value analysis, two assumptions were made: an IT full-time equivalent (FTE) salary of $60,550 1 and a 2.8 percent 2 annual cost-of-living rate increase. file storage savings 12

13 Data Storage Utilization Cost Avoidance The Storage Foundation Oracle RAC and Storage Foundation for Microsoft Windows deployments in January 2002 improved Meredith s storage utilization rates from 33 percent to 60 percent. This significantly reduced storage needs and meant a storage recapture of 27 percent in At an average cost of $4.80 per GB, 3 there is a projected storage cost avoidance of more than $610,000 from January 2002 through December Year Realized Cost Avoidance Projected Cost Avoidance 2002 $41, $48,894 By improving storage utilization from 33% to 60%, Meredith was able to recapture 27% of storage in This calculates to an average storage cost avoidance of 14.8% annually. Calculations are based on storage costs of $4.80/ GB $57, $67, $79, $90, $104, $60,264 $60,264 Storage Volume Realized and Projected Cost Avoidance $550,311 $60,264 Total Storage Cost Avoidance $610,575 Table 1: Storage Utilization Cost Avoidance 13

14 Server Management Benefits Meredith s IT team managed an average of four server migrations each year with each migration taking an average of 65 minutes to complete. Research shows that downtime can cost a media-based business an average of $5,833 per minute. 4 The deployment of Veritas Storage Foundation helped facilitate a more than 50 percent reduction in server downtime during each migration. In addition, the Meredith IT team reduced the time required for one FTE to migrate each server while lowering each server s required maintenance time by 60 percent. As a result, there is a projected server downtime cost avoidance of more than $5.7 million from January 2004 through December In addition, the IT team is expecting to have a productivity gain of more than $160,000 for the same time period. Server Management Data Points Year Realized Benefit Projected Benefit Server Management and Migration: Before the deployment of Storage Foundation, each server migration took one IT FTE 65 minutes to complete. Now, with Storage Foundation, the task takes only 30 minutes. On average, Meredith would migrate four servers annually. In addition, with each migration, each server would require additional tasks such as provisioning, updating, imaging, and other routine administrative tasks, all of which added up to 11.5 hours for one FTE. With the deployment of Storage Foundation, these tasks were reduced to approximately 4.5 hours $23, $25, $27, $29, $30, $16,426 $16,426 IT Realized and Projected Labor Productivity Gains $152,982 $16,426 Server Migration and Downtime: The estimated cost-of-server downtime is $5,833 per minute. Prior to the deployment of Storage Foundation, each migrated server was down an average of 65 minutes. Now, with Storage Foundation, average downtime is 25 minutes for each migrated server. The business value analysis starts in January Server Downtime Realized and Projected Cost Avoidance 2004 $956, $956, $956, $956, $956, $478,333 $478,333 $5,261,668 $478,333 Total Business Value $5,909,409 Table 2: Server Management Productivity Gains 14

15 Backup Labor Cost Avoidance With data volume growing 50 percent annually, Meredith would have needed to hire additional staff to perform its traditional backup operations. This is because Meredith collectively used multiple backup solutions that required individual and non-transferable administrator training and skills. Without Veritas NetBackup, it s projected that Meredith would have needed to add as many as 8.5 FTEs from 2003 to 2009 to the growth in backup volume. However, with a consolidated Veritas NetBackup methodology, each the 8.5 FTEs tasked with performing backups are significantly more productive, thereby allowing Meredith to delay or completely avoid hiring additional IT staff. With this in mind, there is a projected backup labor cost avoidance of more than $2 million from January 2002 through December Year Total GBs Backed Up FTEs Avoided ,000 - $- Realized Cost Avoidance , $54, , $111, , $229, , $294, , $393, , $466,841 Projected Cost Avoidance , $271,950 $271,950 Data Backup Labor Realized and Projected Cost Avoidance $1,821,746 $271,950 Total Labor Cost Avoidance $2,093,696 Table 3: Backup Labor Cost Avoidance 15

16 Application High Availability Cost Avoidance Deploying Veritas Cluster Server addressed Meredith s high availability need while providing additional cost avoidance. At Meredith, centralized cluster management and downtime avoidance generates an estimated $875,000 in annual end-user productivity savings. The downtime cost avoidance value is based on an average of 2.5 hours of downtime per year and $350,000 in costs for each hour of downtime (based on a 2003 Yankee Group Study). 4 Downtime cost avoidance by itself reclaimed more than $5.2 million dollars of potential cost. Reduced Downtime Data Points Year Realized Cost Avoidance Meredith previously experienced an average of 2.5 hours of unplanned downtime annually. With business-critical applications and systems in high availability clusters using Veritas Cluster Server, this downtime was eliminated. The business value analysis assumes downtime losses of $350,000 for each hour of downtime $875, $875, $875, $875, $875,000 Projected Cost Avoidance 2009 $437,500 $437,500 Application High Availability Cost Avoidance $4,812,500 $437,500 Total Cost Avoidance $5,250,000 Table 4: Reduced Downtime from Application Availability Meredith clusters applications and systems for reliability purposes. The N+1 clustering capabilities of Veritas Cluster Server provides value by clustering multiple active nodes to one passive node. This allowed Meredith to avoid the cost of two high-end Solaris-based Sun servers in 2003 and an additional one server each year since for a total of eight servers. Today, Meredith has a two-node, a four-node, and an eight-node cluster. Each server is estimated to cost $100,000 and the annual maintenance saving is approximately $15,000 per server. The benefits of cluster server management also delivered ease of server task management. Meredith was able to redeploy one FTE to other tasks as a result. This cost avoidance and savings is estimated to be more than $1.5 million dollars. 16

17 Year Realized Benefit Projected Benefit 2003 $200,000 Meredith was able to avoid a one-time cost of two Sun Solaris midrange servers by leveraging N+1 technology in Veritas Cluster Server (effective in 2003). In each subsequent year, as additional servers were added to the Meredith computing infrastructure, Meredith was able to avoid adding one Sun Solaris server. The business value analysis calculation assumes an estimated cost of $100,000 for the hardware, software, and maintenance of each server $130, $145, $160, $175, $190, $102,500 $102,500 Server Realized and Projected Cost Avoidance $1,102,500 $102,500 Cluster management tasks such as copying files, installing agents, failover testing, and provisioning of new servers became more efficient with the deployment of Veritas Cluster Server. The number of IT FTEs managing high availability systems was reduced from two to one (reallocated to other more business-critical tasks). The business value analysis calculations begin January $55, $57, $58, $60, $62, $31,994 $31,994 IT Realized and Projected Labor Savings $326,722 $31,994 Total Server Cost Avoidance and Labor Savings $1,563,716 Table 5: Server Cost Avoidance and Labor Savings Storage Savings Wyckoff and his team realized immediate and ongoing storage savings through data compression and single-instance archiving technologies in Symantec Enterprise Vault. Specifically, they were able to maintain their Microsoft Exchange data store at twelve terabytes since 2005, despite an annual 50 percent increase in data. Hence, starting in 2005, Meredith has been able to avoid an increasing amount of storage each year, equating to $1,444,000 in total over the years 2005 through The savings are even more dramatic, as the Meredith team uses Enterprise Vault to archive Microsoft Exchange data on a tier-two EMC Centera storage (at $25/GB versus $45/GB for the tier-one EMC CLARiiON storage system). With this taken into account, an additional $642,000 in total savings is accrued since Or, from January 2005 to December 2009, there is a realized and projected storage cost avoidance of $2,085,

18 Archiving and Compression Data Points Total Size of Microsoft Exchange storage before archiving 1,224GB 4,978GB 11,756GB 20,996GB 25,196GB 50% compression 622GB 2,489GB 5,878GB 10,498GB 12,598GB Net Storage with Enterprise Vault Average cost per GB of storage on EMC CLARiiON 622GB 2,489GB 5,878GB 10,498GB 12,598GB $45 $45 $45 $45 $45 Compression Savings $27,990 $112,005 $264,510 $472,410 $566,910 Savings in Moving Data to Lower Cost Storage Post-Enterprise Vault compressed Microsoft Exchange storage Average cost per GB of storage on EMC CLARiiON Average cost per GB of storage on EMC Centera Lower Cost Storage Savings 622GB 2,498GB 5,878GB 10,498GB 12,598GB $45 $45 $45 $45 $45 $25 $25 $25 $25 $25 $12,440 $49,780 $117,560 $209,960 $251,960 Total Savings $40,430 $161,785 $382,070 $682,370 $818,870 $2,085,525 Table 6: Archiving and Data Compression Storage Savings IT Help Desk and End-user Productivity Improvements With -related support calls comprising the majority of IT help desk calls, the deployment of Enterprise Vault reduced the number of hours spent resolving end-user related issues by 80 percent. Assuming the IT help desk spent a total of 20 hours each week on this task, there is a $113,061 in realized and projected savings from productivity gains from September 2005 through December

19 Year Realized Productivity Gains Projected Productivity Gains 2005 $2,847 Prior to the deployment of Symantec Enterprise Vault in September 2005, the IT help desk spent an average of 20 hours each week resolving end-user related issues. With the adoption of Enterprise Vault, this was reduced to four hours each week $26, $27, $27, $14,352 $14,352 IT Help Desk Realized and Projected Labor Productivity Gains $98,709 $14,352 Total Labor Productivity Gains $113,061 Table 7: IT Help Desk Productivity Gains With the deployment of Enterprise Vault, the Meredith IT team was able to better manage storage quotas, thereby saving employees an average of 30 minutes each week managing their files. Using an average employee salary of $45,8124 and a 2.8 percent 2 annual cost-of-living adjustment, there is a projected productivity savings of more than $2,577,472 from September 2005 through December Year Realized Productivity Gains Projected Productivity Gains End users spent 10 minutes weekly managing PST files to comply with quotas. The business value analysis assumes at an hourly rate of $23.28 (2008), an average of 240 annual work days, an initial deployment to 825 end users in September 2005, and a full deployment to 3,300 employees in January $123, $588, $604, $621, $319,528 $319,529 End-user Realized and Projected Labor Productivity Gains $2,257,943 $319,529 Total Productivity Gains $2,577,473 Table 8: End-user Productivity Gains 19

20 e-discovery Labor Savings The IT team previously allocated one dedicated FTE to perform manual archival searches to fulfill e-discovery requests. With Symantec Enterprise Vault, the legal staff completes e-discovery searches in minutes, rather than days or weeks, thus eliminating the need for IT to be involved in discovery altogether. The reallocated IT FTE savings equate to more than $260,000 in labor productivity gains from September 2005 to December Further, six times each year, for more complex discovery searches, two additional IT staff members were required to assist in the data search process that would last an average of six weeks to complete. Realized and projected labor savings from September 2005 through December 2009 is estimated at $631,406. e-discovery Data Points Year Realized Savings Projected Savings With the deployment of Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator in September 2005, the Meredith IT team was able to redeploy one dedicated FTE who was supporting the legal team for discovery searches. The business value calculations assume 240 work days annually $19, $58, $60, $62, $31,994 $31,994 IT Realized and Projected Labor Savings $232,789 $31,994 In addition to the dedicated FTE, two additional IT FTEs were needed six times a year to assist with extended discovery searches. They spent an average of six weeks for each assignment. With the deployment of Enterprise Vault, the legal staff is able to complete these searches in typically less than one hour $26, $81, $83, $86, $44,299 $44,300 IT Realized and Projected Labor Savings $322,323 $44,300 Total Labor Savings $631,406 Table 9: e-discovery Labor Savings 20

21 Remote Backup Savings Centralization of the 20 remote office backup-and-recovery processes using NetBackup PureDisk is generating business value for Meredith in a number of different areas. NetBackup PureDisk s data deduplication technology eliminated redundant backup data, reducing backup data volumes by more than half. This not only conserves storage resources but reduces required transmission bandwidth. Now, rather than using remote office tape libraries and tape drives, the company backs up to a centralized data store using NetBackup once the data transfers from remote offices to the central data center. Each remote office was able to eliminate an average of $15,000 in backup tape costs and tape library maintenance. In addition, for each site, $5,460 in annual tape server hardware and software was eliminated. Offsite vaulting is no longer necessary. Each site is saving an average of $700 that was previously spent on offsite tape facilities and services. With PureDisk software encryption enabled, the previous hardware encryption technology is no longer needed, which saves $2,000 annually per site. One FTE per site spent an average of 30 minutes daily managing backup operations. With the centralization of remote backups using PureDisk, this task has been eliminated. Deployed in September 2007, tape and labor savings should exceed $1 million through December 2009, according to projections. 21

22 Year Realized Savings Projected Savings Tape Storage Hardware and Libraries: PureDisk was deployed in October 2007 to all 20 remote sites, which the use of tape at a saving of $15,000 per site. The business value analysis savings begin in November $50, $300, $150,000 $150,000 Tape Hardware and Library Realized and Projected Savings $500,000 $150,000 Tape Server Hardware and Software: The PureDisk deployment eliminated the requirement for tape servers at each location. This resulted in average-per-site savings of $5,460 for server hardware and software, support maintenance, and licensing fees. In 2007, the savings are offset by the $3,000 cost of the data center server used to manage the PureDisk backup operation. Tape Server Hardware and Software Realized and Projected Savings Offsite Vaulting Costs: Each site previously paid a monthly average of $700 for off-site vaulting and management of the tape facilities and services. This was eliminated with the PureDisk deployment. Tape Server Hardware and Software Realized and Projected Savings Tape Encryption: This added benefit allowed Meredith to eliminate its previous hardware encryption technology, equating to annual per-site savings of $2, $17, $109, $54,600 $54,600 $181,500 $54, $2, $13, $6,973 $6,974 $23,244 $6, $6, $40, $20,000 $20,000 Tape Encryption Hardware Realized and Projected Savings $66,667 $20,000 Administration Cost Savings: The PureDisk deployment allowed each site to save 30 minutes daily of one FTE s time that is now better spent on other tasks $11, $71, $36,916 $36,916 IT Administration Realized and Projected Labor Savings $120,382 $36,916 Total Savings $1,160,283 Table 10: Remote Location Data Backup Labor and Equipment Savings 22

23 Conclusion To overcome the challenges of a decentralized infrastructure comprising heterogeneous hardware and software solutions, Meredith centralized and standardized management tools and streamlined processes in a number of areas. The company is realizing tangible business value from its different technology initiatives, as described above in detail. Notes 1. State of Iowa. May 2007 net mean salary. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2. Consumer Price Index. October Bureau of Labor Statistics Storage costs provided by Meredith. May Yankee Group, Storage Management Return on Investment from Deploying Veritas Software, September 2003, page 11 23