Quick Facts

Industry

• Information Technology Services

Platforms Requiring Protection

• Microsoft Windows 98, NT, 2000, 2003, 2008
• Novell Netware 6.5 and GroupWise
• Linux
• IBM AIX
• Apple MAC OS
• Various accounting software packages
• Various Student Information System applications and data
• Numerous SQL databases

Challenges

• Tape backup systems were unreliable and costly to maintain
• Education and municipal customers could not commit to IT solutions with uncertain year-to-year support costs
• Simple solution required to back up highly diverse customer networks
• Top notch product quality and vendor support required to maintain cost control

Competitors

• Highly Reliable Systems
• Cybernetics
• Backup Exec
• Barracuda

Solutions

• Unitrends DPUs and Recovery 7 appliances in various customer environments

Benefits

• Protect Windows, NetWare, Linux, AIX, MAC systems with a single solution
• Rapid, reliable recovery
• Outstanding support

Unitrends is the Smart Choice for Think Tank Network Technology Group

Customer Profile

Think Tank Network Technology Group (Think Tank NTG) is a regional information technology services provider based in the Chicago area, serving customers throughout the Midwest for over 20 years.

Widely recognized as having one of the finest engineering teams in the region, Think Tank NTG is a total solutions provider for the design, integration, support and sales for all their customers’ computer technology needs.

With deep knowledge of Microsoft, Novell, Linux, Cisco, IBM and other leading technology platforms, Think Tank NTG’s expert staff will take even the most complex solution from start to finish. Think Tank NTG believes in long term relationships and will be there long after the sale to support their customers.

Challenges

Think Tank NTG offers an affordable online help desk application that is growing in popularity with municipalities and school districts unable to afford a fulltime IT help desk staff.

Cost control is among the biggest challenges facing Think Tank NTG’s education and local government customers, many of them running Novell NetWare and GroupWise, as well as Linux alongside their Microsoft Windows servers and applications.

Think Tank NTG recognized that “There are two types of hard drives – those that have failed and those that will fail.” That is why they stress the importance of backing up computer systems to protect against disaster. Rather than consider only the low initial price of the hardware, customers must recognize that the chance of failure has become the real cost factor.

Think Tank NTG recognized that tape drive backups were in common use among their customers. Given the rising costs of tapes, administration overhead, slow backup/restore speeds, and the overall lack of reliability with tape media, Think Tank NTG was looking for an affordable disk-to-disk offsite backup solution, to expand their portfolio of data protection offerings.

Tony Liotta, Systems Engineer, recalls that the key requirements were rapid recovery, reliability, ability to manage large data set size, and the ability to shrink backup windows.

In researching the alternatives, Think Tank NTG looked at disk-to-disk backup solutions from Highly Reliable Systems, and Cybernetics with a well-known software-only backup vendor as well as a backup solution from Barracuda. None of these solutions offered the necessary scalability, speed, ease-of-use and cost control that the Think Tank NTG school district and other public sector customers required.

Think Tank NTG selected Unitrends for their customers’ whole system protection requirements, and became a Unitrends partner in January 2009.

Benefits

After implementing Unitrends for several school district customers, Think Tank NTG is successfully protecting the full range of IT systems, including Windows 98, NT, 2000, 2003, 2008, Netware 6.5, Linux, AIX and MAC, as well as GroupWise, various accounting software, Student Data and numerous SQL databases.

Unitrends is delivering the needed rapid recovery and reliability features, and has proven able to handle the customers’ data set sizes, as well as shrink their backup windows.

Due to the all-in-one nature of the Unitrends solution, Think Tank NTG is able to support their customers easily, delivering the cost-effective data protection required to protect against disaster.

Think Tank NTG’s help desk and engineering staff has the full support of Unitrends. According to Liotta, Unitrends support has been “outstanding.”

With Unitrends, Think Tank NTG continues to build on its 20 years of delivering reliable, high quality IT solutions and support to cusomers throughout the Midwest.

"The 700 series is a great improvement for licensing."

"Support is outstanding."

"Seamless integration."

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