we can BUSINESS Based in Italy, La Perla is a leading manufacturer of luxury lingerie, with various main brands and a worldwide network of boutiques, both owned and franchised. CHALLENGE To safeguard its supply chain, La Perla needs a robust IT disaster recovery process. With an increasingly complex infrastructure, La Perla needed a scalable backup solution that could operate across multiple platforms. SOLUTION CA ARCserve® Backup enables La Perla to backup data from 50 servers – both physical and virtual. The solution is integrated with other tools to provide a rapid snapshot of devices. BENEFIT La Perla has a cost- effective backup process that ensures continuous access to business critical data, which is key to safeguarding its manufacturing processes and supply chain. CUSTOMER PROFILE Industry: luxury lingerie manufacturing Company: La Perla Employees: several hundred La Perla safeguards continuity of supply chain with CA ARCserve Backup CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
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BusinessBased in Italy, La Perla is a leading manufacturer of luxury lingerie, with various main brands and a worldwide network of boutiques, both owned and franchised.
ChallengeTo safeguard its supply chain, La Perla needs a robust IT disaster recovery process. With an increasingly complex infrastructure, La Perla needed a scalable backup solution that could operate across multiple platforms.
solutionCA ARCserve® Backup enables La Perla to backup data from 50 servers – both physical and virtual. The solution is integrated with other tools to provide a rapid snapshot of devices.
BenefitLa Perla has a cost-effective backup process that ensures continuous access to business critical data, which is key to safeguarding its manufacturing processes and supply chain.
Customer profileindustry: luxury lingerie manufacturingCompany: La Perlaemployees: several hundred
La Perla safeguards continuity of supply chain with CA ARCserve Backup
Customer suCCess story
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La Perla
Businessa leading luxury lingerie manufacturerLa Perla was founded in Bologna, Italy, in 1954 by Ada Masotti, a skilled artisan. Thanks to the quality of its products, the small corsetry workshop grew over the decades and eventually became one of the leading luxury lingerie manufacturers in the world.
In October 2008 the company was acquired by JH Partners, a private equity firm from San Francisco that specialises in investments on luxury brands. From 2010-2011, the collections of the company will be divided in four areas: La Perla, La Perla Villa Toscana, Studio La Perla and Miss Studio La Perla, with the addition of a men’s line.
The company’s distribution network includes subsidiaries in Germany, France, Spain, the USA and exclusive importers. In addition to being carried in the best specialty and department stores, La Perla has created a chain of boutiques, both owned and franchised, located in major cities around the world.
Outlets directly controlled by the company – as a result of recent acquisitions – include 12 points of sale in luxury English department stores, such as Harrods, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols; most La Perla shops in Benelux; a boutique in Singapore; and six points of sale in Hong Kong and in China.
Challengesafeguarding business continuity across a growing it infrastructure The manufacturing process and supply chain for La Perla’s lingerie products are highly reliant on IT systems. As a result, La Perla has always recognised the importance of an IT disaster recovery solution as part of an effective business continuity strategy.
“We’ve always been very cautious about data protection,” explains Mauro Ruscelli, IT infrastructure and safety manager at La Perla. “We first addressed this problem back in 1999, when our IT infrastructure was still very simple: at that time we only had four servers to back up, one for each of our sites in the Bologna area.”
Back in 1999, after evaluating a number of alternatives La Perla chose a CA Technologies recovery management solution. “CA ARCserve Backup provided full coverage with each of the four servers equipped with its own CA Technologies software and tape drive for local backup,” Ruscelli recalls.
Since then, the IT infrastructure at La Perla has significantly evolved as a result of three prime factors: business consolidation (all activities in Bologna have converged on a single site), growth of data volumes, and the adoption of new technologies.
“Today - besides our AS400 system which is not involved in these recovery solutions – we have approximately 50 Intel-based servers, with both Windows and Unix. We have adopted a server virtualisation solution based on VMware software and on a blade server connected via NSF to partitions
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La Perla
in NetApp devices,” comments Ruscelli. “Over time, the software we use has evolved as well: for example, Lotus Domino has introduced the DAOS functionality (Domino® Attachment and Object Service), which we use on a regular basis to deduplicate email attachments. We use deduplication on our virtualised servers as well. And the data volume to be backed up is now in the range of two to three terabytes.”
3terabytes of data to be backed up daily from 50 virtualised servers to two tape libraries
Servers at La Perla headquarters support a number of centralised services, which are essential for the day-to-day running of the business: for example email for all its foreign subsidiaries and shops, business intelligence based on sales figures captured at points of sale and Intranet portals used by retailers and major suppliers for placing and taking orders.
Data backup is just one of the elements of the business continuity strategy that La Perla has put in place. “First of all we rely on redundancy: for our email and file system we use clusters comprising two servers each, with multiple hard disks. Backup is the last defence in case of disaster and, as such, it must be absolutely reliable. This is why today we use two large tape libraries, one with 48 tapes and two writing heads, the other with 64 tapes and three writing heads, both equipped with an elevator,” says Ruscelli.
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La Perla
The company has since upgraded to the latest release of CA ARCserve Backup with help from CA Technologies partner, Emilia Informatica (Piacenza, Italy).
There are two key factors that make the solution so suitable for La Perla: its scalability and its ability to take advantage of native functionalities offered by other software tools, such as Lotus Domino’s DAOS or the backup functions included in VMware.
“This is the key to fast backup,” Ruscelli explains. “If we had to backup virtual machines in a traditional way, the process would require days; but since CA ARCserve Backup uses native functions in VMware we can get a snapshot of our machines in just a few seconds, without any impact on service continuity. If needed, this snapshot is immediately available for data recovery, and the slow part of the process – recording data to the tape – can be performed offline without hurry.”
Solutionscalable and integrated recovery management In 2010 La Perla felt it needed a new recovery management solution to support its increasingly complex IT infrastructure. However, rather than invest in an entirely new backup platform or upgrade to a new release, La Perla was able to access the functionality it needed by customising its existing version of CA ARCserve Backup.
“In just three days, a skilled pre-sales engineer from the Milan CA Technologies office fixed all issues and configured CA ARCserve Backup to enable us to handle the necessary complexity,” comments Ruscelli.“More than 10 years after the initial choice - it is still the best solution for our company.”
“We can get a snapshot of our machines in just a few seconds, without any impact on continuity.”mauro ruscelliIT infrastructrure and safety manager, La Perla
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La Perla
Benefitensuring a seamless supply chain with cost-effective data backup La Perla performs a daily incremental backup for most of its 50 servers, except for some devices that are only used for services such as anti-spam, which are backed up on a weekly basis. Daily backup is very fast and requires no monitoring from La Perla IT personnel, a key aspect in reducing cost.
“Continuing to use CA ARCserve Backup was the best choice for us in terms of costs, as we could take advantage of the software licences we already owned and avoid new training for our employees,” comments Ruscelli.
As well as helping to contain IT costs, CA ARCserve Backup enables La Perla to:
Improve staff productivity by ensuring continuous access to critical business data •
Safeguard the manufacturing process for its lingerie products •
Prevent disruption to the supply chain and store deliveries •
“CA ARCserve Backup gives us the confidence that our business continuity strategy includes a reliable disaster recovery solution, without placing heavy burdens on our IT budget. This is very important for our business, which is highly reliant on IT systems,” Ruscelli concludes.
“More than 10 years after the initial choice - CA ARCserve Backup is still the best solution for our company.”mauro ruscelliIT infrastructrure and safety manager, La Perla
