Quick Facts

Industry

• Transportation including
• Mail Delivery
• Agriculture
• Manufacturing
• Mail Transportation Equipment Maintenance

Platforms Requiring Protection

• Windows Server 2003

Challenges

• Tape-based solution was slow and unreliable
• Needed a simple, easy-to-use disk-backup solution
• Solution needed to include a way to move backups offsite
• No other solutions were considered

Competitors

• DPU2000
• Rotational (archive) drives

Solutions

• DPU-2000

Benefits

• Unitrends file backups are fast and reliable
• Unitrends Data Assurance plan covers hardware, software, and technical support – all in one program
• Unitrends support always “prompt, reliable”
• Rotational archive drives used to move backups offsite

Alan Ritchey Maintains Quality, Dependability with Unitrends

Customer Profile

Alan Ritchey, Inc. is a transportation, mail delivery and agriculture manufacturer and supplier headquartered in the City of Valley View, in northeast Texas.

From its founding in 1964, Alan Ritchey, Inc. has grown to become a highly diversified and successful business with 1100 employees engaged in agriculture, feed mill, oil field services, manufacturing, and transportation operations.

The mission of Alan Ritchey, Inc. is to give their customers superior quality, service, reliability and value. Alan Ritchey, Inc. measures its success through the eyes of their customer. Alan Ritchey, Inc. is dedicated to long-term relationships with their customers and maximizing opportunities for everyone to achieve their desired potential while striving for the continued growth and profitability of the company.

Challenges

In 2007, Alan Ritchey, Inc. decided it was time to replace the existing tape backup system with something faster and more reliable.

On a daily basis, Alan Ritchey, Inc. employees might be inspecting and repairing mail transportation equipment for the US Postal Service, or analyzing a drum of hazardous waste, or providing dozens of various other important products and services. No matter which business unit, service or area of operation, at Alan Ritchey, Inc. it’s all about reliability and getting the job done right.

The decision was made to reduce the risk of lost data, or business interruption due to a server crash, database corruption, or site-level disaster. This meant it was time to replace the tape-based solution used to backup and store critical files.

As the industry is moving away from tape backup and storage, Alan Ritchey, Inc. wanted to move to a data protection solution that would be disk-based, easy to use, and reliable. It was important to receive support and ongoing updates from the vendor.

The solution needed to maintain the ability to move backups offsite, to protect Alan Ritchey, Inc.’s business systems and data in case of fire or other site-level disaster.

Computer Tech, a Dallas area computer reseller and systems integrator, invited Hieb and his colleagues to view a live demo of the Unitrends product. Seeing the Unitrends advanced backup and recovery features in a live demo resulted in Hieb’s recognizing the enormous value of the Unitrends disk-based solution, compared to Alan Ritchey, Inc.’s existing tape backup. Looking back on the 2007 decision to go with Unitrends, Hieb recalls, “It was a no brainer.”

Benefits

After implementing Unitrends, Alan Ritchey, Inc. enjoys daily disk-to-disk (D2D) file backups that are much faster and more reliable than what the old tape backup solution provided.  

Alan Ritchey, Inc. also utilizes Unitrends for disk-to-disk-to-disk (D2D2D) archiving. As a result, the Unitrends solution has completely eliminated the need for tapes. The archive disks are rotated offsite, while the original backups remain on the Unitrends appliance for speedy recovery when and if required.

Over the years, with each software update, the Unitrends solution has become more powerful and easy to use. For example, today the Rapid Recovery Console (RRC) delivers a comprehensive set of features in a single pane of glass web browser interface.

At the time Alan Ritchey, Inc. initially purchased their Unitrends solution, the Rapid Recovery Console was just being introduced to replace a Motif Linux GUI administrative console. Gradually over the months and years, all the Unitrends updates and enhancements have been delivered to Alan Ritchey, Inc. as part of their Unitrends Data Assurance annual maintenance program; there has been no additional cost for these significant upgrades and enhancements.

What Hieb really likes is the ease of maintaining the system and applying the updates. This is due to the comprehensive Data Assurance annual maintenance program as well as the ease of applying updates delivered and installed automatically, usually with no more than a couple of mouse clicks in the intuitive Rapid Recovery Console.

Alan Ritchey, Inc. now has a data protection solution that lives up to the values of quality and dependability on which this Valley View, Texas business was founded over three decades ago.

Describing Unitrends, Hiebs remarks, “It has proven to be a quick and reliable method.”

In fact, “Quality Service and Dependability Since 1964” expresses the attitude and commitment that has guided Alan Ritchey, Inc. to its success over thirty years.

Now with Unitrends reliable backup and recovery, no doubt Alan Ritchey, Inc. will achieve its mission with continued success well into the 21st century.

“Our reseller invited us to see a demo of Unitrends, and we were sold.”

“Unitrends’ quick restore times are the best feature.”

“The option to backup the AS400 is nice, but we currently do not utilize it.”

“One nice feature is the software maintenance plan covers new versions…  Some companies try to nickel and dime you out of every upgrade, and if you are not comfortable installing it they then charge you support for that too.  Unitrends support contract seems to cover it all.”

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