IT Solutions Group, Inc
Realizing Round-the-Clock Business Continuity

Enterprises operating in a hypercompetitive market today have low tolerance levels for downtime and data loss as they strive to achieve higher levels of systems availability. High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HADR) solutions have been misconstrued as an inessential luxury, although enterprises are actively seeking them today in a bid to counter unplanned application outages, lost employee productivity, damage to reputation, direct revenue loss, or possible legal penalties.

The Clermont, FL-based IT Solutions Group, Inc., (ITSG) has established itself as an educator specializing in High Availability Disaster Recovery (HADR), system management, and data migrations. An IBM Advanced Business Partner, ITSG is a recognized presence offering a wide array of HADR solutions for the IBM i environment including Maxava HA suite, IBM PowerHA, Library Replication, HA Assessments and IBM i OS upgrades. “We often see other competitors or business partners offering one HA product because it is most profitable for them even though it may not be the best fit for their client,” points out Matt Staddler, Founder and President, IT Solutions Group, Inc.

ITSG puts time and effort into understanding a customer’s environment informing them of their options and lets them choose the HA solution that is best suited to their business. Catering to SMBs and data-intensive enterprises across North America, Canada, and the Caribbean, ITSG has adopted an educative and consultative approach to solve the IBM i infrastructure challenges facing their customers. Texas-based Mueller, Inc., a leading manufacturer of pre-engineered metal buildings and roofing products is one of the beneficiaries of ITSG’s HADR expertise that helped them analyze and replace their outdated disaster recovery solution that could not meet their recovery time and data loss objectives. Facing rapid business expansion of sales branches and manufacturing sites, Mueller, with ITSG, implemented IBM’s highly automated PowerHA disk-based clustering solution providing the client with near-continuous application availability along with real-time replication.

ITSG puts time and effort into understanding a customer’s environment informing them of their options and lets them choose the HA solution that is best suited to their business

In addition to its multiple HA solutions for IBM Power System clients, in 2008 ITSG entered the Colocation services arena with world-class data centers in Chicago, IL and Orlando, FL. The primary objective of these state-of-the-art facilities is to provide a secure secondary location for HA failover, DR testing, library replication, DR operations and OS testing. With features like secure remote VPN connectivity, the client can rent virtual server partitions from ITSG with options to establish and run their own backup server at the data centers. “Frankly, we don’t want the systems in our data centers to be a burden to anyone so we spend the time up front to keep them current and manage them proactively,” asserts Staddler.

ITSG’s core competencies as a project-based solutions provider, revolve around synergistic teamwork and the ability to set realistic goals. With decades of combined IBM i HADR experience, the company’s mutual partnership with IBM had then collaborating in the creation of the current edition IBM Redbook series: IBM PowerHA SystemMirror for i.

Furthermore, ITSG has also perfected its technical processes for performing system installations and data migrations. As newer IBM Power Systems require a thorough analysis during a hardware upgrade or system migration, the team at ITSG reviews each component of a client’s current IBM Power System (AS400, iSeries) to determine the exact requirement avoiding the addition of unnecessary hardware. “This not only saves the client unnecessary hardware expenditure but also allows them to cut costs in the future with ongoing IBM Maintenance agreements,” concludes Staddler.