NE Utilities Deploys Continuity

BOSTON and TEL AVIV -- Continuity Software, a leading provider of disaster recovery management (DRM) solutions, today announced that Northeast Utilities (NYSE: NU), New England’s largest utilities company, has deployed its RecoverGuard™ software and DR Assurance™ service to increase its confidence in its ability to recover critical IT systems in the face of a disaster.

Northeast Utilities’ production and disaster recovery (DR) datacenters are large, complicated, heterogeneous, environments with a myriad of interdependencies. Its environment covers three states: Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and includes both UNIX and Windows servers, as well as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase databases. The datacenters support and protect business services across the organization including ERP, supply chain and customer relationship management, as well as both “off-the-shelf” and “home-grown” utility specific applications.

Because Northeast Utilities’ IT environment was so large, interdependent and mission-critical, it was not able to simulate an accurate DR test scenario by shutting its systems down cold. In other words, in the real world there is no such thing as a ‘graceful shutdown’ during a true disaster event. Northeast Utilities had already implemented the most advanced technologies available and adhered religiously to industry best practices, however the addition of the Continuity Software disaster recovery management solution increased its confidence in its disaster recovery readiness.

Once deployed, RecoverGuard scanned Northeast Utilities' open systems DR environment nightly, ensuring that no inadvertent configuration changes might adversely affect its recoverability status. When an issue was detected, RecoverGuard delivered an instantaneous alert, allowing Northeast Utilities to take immediate action and ensure ongoing data protection, disaster recoverability and business continuity. Continuity Software’s DR Assurance service further enhanced Northeast Utilities’ DR strategy. Daily statistics, tickets and event notifications are now sent directly to the Continuity Software DR Specialists Team for review and analysis. When a problem is detected, a Continuity Software DR Specialist alerts Northeast Utilities and provides recommendations on how best to remedy.

“Northeast Utilities’ datacenter is a classic example of a highly sophisticated environment, employing the most advanced technologies, run by a truly world-class team. They recognized that testing their DR environment several times each year was simply not sufficient and proactively sought a solution that would take their DR strategy to the next level,” said Gil Hecht, Founder and CEO, Continuity Software. “Continuity Software’s RecoverGuard, backed-up by its DR Assurance service, helps Northeast Utilities to maintain its uncompromised commitment to data protection, disaster resilience and business continuity, thereby ensuring its ongoing delivery of the region’s most robust and dependable electric and natural gas services.”Northeast Utilities has also benefitted from the RecoverGuard Optimization Engine’s ability to leverage its in-depth DR topology map in order to detect both under and over utilized assets, allowing Northeast Utilities to fine-tune its resources and further drive infrastructure value.

“While the additional value Northeast Utilities is able to derive from its infrastructure is certainly a benefit, it really views this more as a further demonstration and validation that Continuity Software thoroughly understands its environment,” said Hecht.

Continuity Software Inc.