Case Study
for Natural Disaster Mitigations and Efficient Daily Operations
The Background
Being located in Texas’ “Hurricane Alley” can present any number of problems for businesses located there. For credit unions, whose members need to count on uninterrupted access to their services, being located in a commonly affected disaster zone brings unique problems that require specific solutions.
Such was the case with Beaumont, Texas-based DuGood Credit Union. Founded in 1962, DuGood Credit Union (DuGood) has a rich history of serving not only the financial needs of its members with a full suite of financial and lending services, but also supporting the civic and cultural needs of the community with its commitment to giving back. The DuGood name became a symbol for the organization’s focus on supporting the community and delivering stellar service to its members.
Over the decades, DuGood has proven over that it can deliver on its promises to members, but one thing it couldn’t guarantee was uninterrupted service due to the hurricanes that are so common in the area. The institution knew it needed to elevate its disaster preparedness position to better address the challenges of operating a 24/7 financial institution in a geography prone to natural disasters.
The Challenge
DuGood had just signed a cloud-hosting agreement with SwitchThink Solutions to do just that when, within days, an unforeseen incident with its existing vendor prompted the credit union to accelerate its plans. That’s no easy feat when you consider what’s at stake, not only for IT teams and credit union employees, but, more importantly, for members so that service isn’t interrupted.
Thankfully, the incident didn’t affect DuGood’s primary server, but it meant that its backup system was offline at the height of hurricane season. Timing was absolutely crucial. DuGood needed to move its disaster recovery system into a secure cloud environment as quickly as possible.
Traditionally, when setting up a new vendor partnership, there would be time for a kick-off, get-to-know-you calls, and long-runway timelines that provide ample planning phases and contingency cushions. DuGood’s situation didn’t allow for that. Instead, it was a roll-up-your-sleeves and get-it-done ASAP timeline with little margin for error or inefficiency.
The Solution
SwitchThink went to work and pulled off the seemingly impossible task of implementing DuGood’s KeyStone disaster recovery system into SwitchThink’s data centers within two weeks, something that greatly impressed the DuGood team. After reestablishing service and ensuring DuGood’s ability to recover in the event of a disaster, SwitchThink continued forward to complete the migration of DuGood’s KeyStone production server into the SwitchThink private cloud. “Having our system up and replicating, caught up so quickly, and critical third-party vendor connections in place was such a relief,” said Clint Wilson, President & CEO, DuGood Credit Union.
Being located on the Texas Gulf Coast, hurricanes are a very real threat. We owe it to our members to be prepared with the highest level of disaster recovery service available. SwitchThink made it possible for us to meet this obligation with confidence.
DuGood would not have put its trust in SwitchThink to achieve this speedy migration if it had not already become convinced of SwitchThink’s unparallelled delivery capabilities and unmatched KeyStone expertise.
SwitchThink’s subject-matter experts were clearly well versed in the details and nuances of a transition of this size. And DuGood’s site visit to a SwitchThink data center provided tangible proof of SwitchThink’s best-in-class standards for service excellence. SwitchThink has two geographically distant, PCI-compliant facilities that are built to Tier 3 standards with guarantees of 100% availability for power and cooling as well as federal-grade security.
“After the site visit to SwitchThink headquarters, and touring the data center, the degree of confidence that I had in their team and in the technology they were offering us was extremely high, and from a security and resiliency aspect, there was a high level of trust right from the beginning,” said Wilson. “The first-class infrastructure, built-in redundancy, and security protocols that were apparent in their operations, gave us the confidence we needed that SwitchThink was the right decision” he said. Achieving this level of quality and operational efficiency is not anything DuGood would have been able to achieve in-house.
The Results
After the successful transition to SwitchThink’s KeyStone Infrastructure Services solution, DuGood and SwitchThink concluded DuGood’s transformational journey with the migration of all its back-office applications into the SwitchThink private cloud. SwitchThink’s Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Solution allows KeyStone credit unions to host other mission-critical applications right alongside their KeyStone core platform, better protecting their entire technology ecosystem.
Since completing its infrastructure transformation into the cloud, DuGood has realized meaningful financial savings as a result of its partnership with SwitchThink. The company has been able to avoid the ongoing cost of maintaining and upgrading physical hardware, and it now has more flexibility when it comes to prioritizing and allocating resources to implement member-impacting projects and upgrades on its own timetable. But most importantly, DuGood’s leadership team can rest more soundly each day knowing their members’ accounts are protected when the next disaster strikes.
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Meaningful financial savings
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Ongoing cost of maintaining and upgrading physical hardware
- Rest soundly knowing their members are protected when the next disaster strikes
- More flexibility to prioritize and allocate IT resources to focus on member impacting projects and upgrades on own timeline