SOX News

Camden Property Trust Chooses Brocade's Remote Office Data Management Solution

(Jan 08, 2008)-- Brocade announced that Camden Property Trust, one of the nation's largest real estate investment trusts, is using Brocade StorageX and the product's file virtualization capabilities to aggregate and automate the management of mission-critical file data generated at its seven remote offices. The Brocade StorageX file data management software eliminates the costs and time required to maintain tape backup systems at remote offices, and is designed to help ensure that the firm meets Sarbanes-Oxley regulations mandating the safekeeping of key business information.

With nearly 200 communities across the U.S. encompassing 70,000 apartment homes, Camden clearly requires effective data backup. The 2,000-employee enterprise, founded in 1982, must preserve files and records, including images of properties, blueprints, leases, and financial and HR data, which it uses to invest in, develop, and operate properties in 13 states. The Houston-based firm must also secure e-mail and other data as required by Sarbanes-Oxley.

"Brocade StorageX is an easy, very cost-effective strategy for efficiently managing file data across distributed sites," said Charles Collins, Network Administrator, Camden Property Trust. "By consolidating file data daily at our data center without manual intervention, we did away with tape solutions at every remote office and the hours employees spent every week to operate them. There's now a single point of ownership for our stored files and we control all of it centrally. By working seamlessly with our Brocade SAN switches, Brocade StorageX provides a superior backup and disaster recovery solution, ensuring the safety of our business data and regulatory compliance."

Camden's need for a more effective backup strategy stemmed from the costs and complexity of its prior approach. Previously, staff at the firm's remote offices backed up approximately 30 gigabytes of locally created data onto tapes each week, mailed the tapes to the firm's data center, and inserted new tapes into the remote office backup systems. The process required up to three hours weekly at each facility and, because most sites lacked skilled IT professionals, the process was subject to error.

"We needed a much more secure means to protect the data produced in our field offices along with a more efficient and reliable method of backing up that data," said Collins. "Using Brocade StorageX now allows Camden's employees more time to focus on day-to-day operations."

Camden deployed Brocade StorageX to remedy this situation. The Brocade solution is an integrated application suite featuring multiple file data management capabilities, including migration and consolidation, business continuity, remote site data management, Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), storage optimization, and data classification and reporting. Camden administrators configured the solution's replication policies to automate the daily replication of data from each distributed facility across Camden's Wide Area Network (WAN) to its data center in Houston, Texas. The replication and corresponding backups are performed at night to leverage the firm's WAN during times of low traffic volumes.

Share or bookmarklet this web page at: