Maxava has announced the launch of its Maxava Cloud microsite to highlight how customers, independent software vendors (ISVs), and cloud hosting companies can utilize Maxava HA software to enable HA/DR in the cloud.

Maxava has been developing cloud-enabled IBM i high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) software for many years and has been delivering IBM i cloud solutions with partners such as SunGard Public Sector since 2005.  Over 150 customers already protect their critical data and business operations using cloud-based HA/DR solutions powered by Maxava HA.

The new Maxava Cloud microsite has been created to highlight how customers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and cloud hosting companies are utilizing Maxava HA software to enable HA/DR in the cloud.  The aim is to provide insight for customers on what is being done in the market and to provide a growing resource of information and case studies detailing real life projects.  The site will also be relevant to ISVs who are interested in providing cloud-based DR to their IBM i customer base directly or via partners and to cloud-hosting providers who are looking to expand their existing services to the IBM i platform. The site defines "cloud-based DR" at a high level, outlines the benefits of the “Maxava HA in the Cloud” model and provides quotes and case studies from Maxava cloud customers.

“Many businesses that run on IBM i do not have access to a backup datacenter or even to a backup IBM i server,” explained Simon O’Sullivan, Maxava senior vice president. “These businesses want to focus on their core activities and leave their disaster recovery to be fully managed by a professional availability team that also provides datacenter services, 24x7 monitoring, and DR testing. The cloud provider can virtualize the backup IBM i server to host multiple customers to reduce hardware and datacenter costs. This model is also known as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Recovery as a Service (RaaS).”

SMB customers are moving to cloud DR in increasing numbers, according to Maxava.  The model provides some real benefits such as removing the direct capital costs of a second data center facility and of purchasing a second server, while at the same time offering a fully managed service that avoids any concerns about perceived complexity.  DR testing and role-swaps are often provided as part of a monthly payment schedule along with secure SLA’s to guarantee minimum recovery times and recovery points.

According to a global survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute, American SMBs are implementing cloud services for infrastructure needs and virtualization. The study revealed that 36 percent of American SMBs have migrated at least half of their infrastructure to a cloud environment, indicating small firms now have a greater understanding of the cost-saving benefits of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Twenty-four percent of SMBs are now completing backup and disaster recovery functions in the cloud.  According to experts, offsite or online backup and disaster recovery solutions are imperative to ensuring the security of company data and the continuity of critical business functions during a natural disaster or unplanned period of downtime.

Although most SMBs haven't transitioned backup and disaster recovery tasks to the cloud, 40 percent acknowledged a virtualized or cloud-based environment would augment both processes. Meanwhile, the report found that American SMBs are losing an average of $388,426 per year due to downtime (Source: Proofpoint.com).

Maxava is ideally suited to the cloud DR model for several reasons, says O’Sullivan. “Maxava HA was designed from the outset to handle very high transactional volumes, to focus heavily on replication integrity rather than to primarily rely on after-the-event ‘correction mechanisms’ such as autonomics, and critically, to be easy to use.  These are incredibly important features in the cloud environment where efficiency and accuracy are key and are often governed by stringent and contractually binding SLAs."

Maxava has always put considerable effort into making access to important information readily available.  Maxava HA has had a full GUI interface since its launch and has more recently introduced an industry first with its cutting edge maxView interface products for mobile devices.

Features such as Maxava GUI and maxView Manager allow service providers to easily monitor and manage multiple customers from a single real-time graphical browser.  Customers can install the maxView PC widget to provide real time confirmation to the end customer that their replication environment is up-to-date and running correctly.

The Maxava Cloud microsite can be visited at www.maxavacloud.com.