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Delivering high availability for mission-critical logistics processes
With Stream, a high-stakes and time-sensitive transport management solution, IT service provider Proximity helps hundreds of companies keep their deliveries on schedule and maintain supply chain efficiency. The Stream application draws on the performance and reliability of IBM i and is trusted by pharmaceuticals, automotive companies, retailers and other businesses that rely on real-time data to manage logistics and deliveries.
With customers depending on Stream to manage over 50,000 daily deliveries, Proximity aims to meet the highest standards in availability and operational continuity.
Proximity’s previous disaster recovery (DR) provider was struggling to keep pace with the growth of Stream. The costs of the DR service were growing and Proximity lacked confidence in its capability and scalability. As Proximity continued to expand to serve larger clients with fleets of hundreds of vehicles, the limitations of this DR solution presented a real business risk.
Dave Pickburn, Director and Founder at Proximity, explains: “If the system is down for even just a few hours, it could be catastrophic. With thousands of drivers and clients counting on us, we knew we needed a reliable solution that could scale seamlessly to deliver full performance almost instantly after a failover.”
Proximity partnered with IBM and IBM Gold Business Partner Covenco to implement IBM® Power® Virtual Server (PowerVS) as a flexible, reliable, cloud-based DR solution for Stream.
IBM PowerVS enables Proximity to replicate data from applications running on the IBM i operating system in real-time and scale resources almost instantly during unplanned outages, helping the Stream service to remain up and running for every driver and every delivery. Covenco worked alongside IBM to optimize the sizing and configuration of IBM PowerVS instances to meet Proximity’s unique operational needs while keeping costs manageable.
Proximity worked closely with Covenco and IBM specialists during overnight maintenance windows at weekends to deliver a smooth implementation and seamless transition.
Pete Samways, Development Manager and Co-Founder at Proximity, notes: “The ability to rapidly dial up resources was a game changer for us. With our old solution, we had to shut the server down and power it back up, which added 20 minutes to the failover process. With IBM PowerVS, we simply define the recovery resources we need online, and the system adapts instantaneously.”
Business continuity, cost efficiency and client confidence
With the flexible, pay-as-you-go billing model of the IBM PowerVS cloud solution, Proximity gains business agility and can recover 50% faster with optimized performance at a fraction of the cost. Proximity only pays for the resources it actually consumes, enabling a highly cost-efficient disaster recovery process.
The DR solution from Covenco helps Proximity maximize the availability of the Stream service, helping customers keep their complex logistics operations running smoothly and without interruption.
Today, Proximity also uses IBM PowerVS as a convenient tool to simplify infrastructure maintenance on its primary on-premises IBM Power servers. When the company wishes to carry out server maintenance, it can simply invoke the DR procedure and move production workloads to IBM PowerVS. When maintenance is complete, Proximity can then move the workloads back. This flexible capability enhances overall resilience and helps Proximity maintain its competitive edge in the highly demanding transport management industry.
Dave Pickburn concludes: “IBM PowerVS offers a very efficient disaster recovery solution, providing the performance, scalability and reliability to meet the needs of a real-time SaaS application. Based on our very positive experience with the speed and flexibility of IBM PowerVS, we’re now planning to use this DR approach for other clients and applications too. We even think that we could use IBM PowerVS as the primary instance for our production applications in the future.”
Proximity (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a leading specialist in IBM i application development and support, focusing on ERP software and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). Alongside its professional services offerings, Proximity operates Stream, a SaaS transport management solution for managing complex logistics workflows, helping to keep deliveries and supply chain processes on schedule.
Covenco (link resides outside of ibm.com) combines experienced data management services with computer brokerage, hardware sales and support. Since 2002, Covenco has consistently supported customers with world-class disaster prevention and recovery services, further establishing their reputation among data management companies in the UK and across the globe. Their combined data management and hardware operations mean that they can support any scale of IT operations, from small businesses to enterprise-scale data centers.
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Client examples are presented as illustrations of how those clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Actual performance, cost, savings or other results in other operating environments may vary.
