Leading T&E management firm Concur selects ExaGrid for scalability and faster backups and restores of petabyte-level data

Westborough, MA — August 23, 2012 — ExaGrid® Systems, Inc., the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with data deduplication, today announced that an increasing number of companies with large data sizes and demanding backup requirements are turning to ExaGrid for faster backups and restores and seamless scalability to maintain a fixed length backup window as data grows.

Concur, a leading travel and expense management solutions provider, stores over 2.5PB of data on their ExaGrid system and is among a growing number of ExaGrid customers with large amounts of data whose backup needs outstripped the capabilities of their former backup solutions. Trusted by more than 15,000 organizations and used by over 18 million people in countries around the world – including 6 of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies, Concur’s on-demand services annually process more than 50 million travel and expense (T&E) transactions.

Companies with large data volumes and high data growth like Concur are choosing ExaGrid’s disk backup with deduplication to meet their backup and recovery needs in large part because of ExaGrid’s GRID architecture, which provides easy scalability by adding full servers in a grid as data expands. With other disk backup solutions that have a front-end server architecture and add just disk shelves as data grows, the backup windows expand over time to a point where the front-end server must be replaced with a more powerful server via a costly “forklift upgrade.” In contrast, ExaGrid’s scalable GRID-based approach that adds full servers—including memory, processor, disk, and bandwidth—maintains a fixed length backup window as data increases with no forklift upgrades or product obsolescence.

Before turning to ExaGrid, Concur faced multiple challenges with its backup infrastructure:

• Concur was using a disk-based backup device with a single controller, which could grow in storage capacity, but not processing power.
• According to Sean Graver, storage architect for Concur, the device became overwhelmed by backup requirements and was not scalable. Restores were often difficult because the data deduplication process took too long.
• Over time, the data volume exceeded the capacity of the system, and Concur was faced with having to replace the existing system and essentially start over again, or implement a new solution.

Concur needed a solution that would not only meet their backup requirements today but would also scale to handle more data without increasing the backup window as the company’s data volume continues to grow.

After installing ExaGrid at multiple locations, Concur saw immediate improvements:

• Backups now meet the backup window goals.
• Restores, especially from databases, are fast by leveraging a full copy of the most recent backup in ExaGrid’s high-speed landing zone.
• ExaGrid’s zone-level deduplication enables Concur to store nearly 3 PB of data using 177 TB of disk space.
• Concur gained cost-effective scalability, as it can now add capacity in modular increments and pay as they grow.

In addition, the plug-and-play system integrated seamlessly with Concur’s existing backup application, thanks to ExaGrid’s partnerships with backup software manufacturers.

Other companies with large amounts of data to back up who have turned to ExaGrid include:

• Aberdeen Asset Management PLC London, a global investment management group.
• Connecticut State University System, a public university system in Connecticut.
• Cox Communications, a cable entertainment and broadband services provider.
• Hitachi Consulting, a global business and IT consulting company.
• Massachusetts Port Authority, a self-sustaining public transportation authority.
• Royal London Group, a mutual life and pensions company.

An August 2011 report by Gartner, Inc. further confirms this trend of organizations reevaluating their obsolete backup approaches. Entitled, “Market Trends: Midsize Businesses Are Embracing New Backup Techniques and Vendors,” Gartner noted that the recovery market is in a “state of modernization, which favors newer innovative solutions over established, market share leaders and/or installed incumbent providers.”

Supporting Quotes:

• Sean Graver, storage architect for Concur: “Our customers rely on Concur to manage and protect their critical travel and expense data, and the ExaGrid gives us an unbeatable combination of backup and restore speed, reliability and scalability to handle large data volumes. ExaGrid’s post-process deduplication technology is light years ahead of what we were using before, allowing us to perform multiple restores each day where we have immediate access to data in the landing zone.”
• Marc Crespi, VP of product management for ExaGrid: “Concur’s situation is common to companies with large data sizes and high data growth rates. Their organizations are plagued by the ‘grow-break-replace’ cycle whereby as data grows, eventually the backup infrastructure breaks and has to be replaced or upgraded.  ExaGrid is the only disk backup solution that solves that problem, and we’re pleased that Concur found almost overnight success with ExaGrid’s proven architecture optimized for backup and restore performance and cost-effective scalability.”

About ExaGrid’s Technology:
The ExaGrid system is a plug-and-play disk backup appliance that works with existing backup applications and enables faster and more reliable backups and restores. Customers report that backup time is reduced by 30 to 90 percent over traditional tape backup. ExaGrid’s patented zone-level data deduplication technology and most recent backup compression reduces the amount of disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to as high as 50:1 or more, resulting in a cost comparable to traditional tape-based backup.

About ExaGrid Systems, Inc.:
ExaGrid offers the only disk-based backup appliance with data deduplication purpose-built for backup that leverages a unique architecture optimized for performance, scalability and price. The combination of post-process deduplication, most recent backup cache, and GRID scalability enables IT departments to achieve the shortest backup window and the fastest, most reliable restores and disaster recovery without backup window expansion or forklift upgrades as data grows. With offices and distribution worldwide, ExaGrid has more than 4,500 systems installed at more than 1,400 customers, and over 300 published customer success stories.

ExaGrid is a registered trademark of ExaGrid Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.