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• 2008

S&T Implements Large Project for Bulgarian Telecom

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery System installed

The Bulgarian Telecommunications Group (BTC) is the prime supplier of telecommunications services in Bulgaria and employs more than 8,000 experts. The company provides over 2.1 million fixed line connections and has over 1.1 million cell phone customers via its GSM operator Vivatel. The company has state-of the-art digital transmission systems, radio and TV broadcasting facilities and satellite earth stations. The systems use a fiber optics network stretching over 6,000 km, microwave links with distances of over 2,000 km and nationwide Internet and data transmission networks.

Data Security as a Competitive Factor

The availability and security of data, applications and processes plays a critical corporate role for BTC. The company therefore established a central data centre in Sofia in 2004. In 2007, BTC began with the planning, drafting and construction of a Disaster Recovery data center that was to fulfill two critical requirements: firstly, the provision of asynchronous data replication and data consistency with the central data center at all times; secondly, it should be far enough away from Sofia to be able to provide disaster recovery in the event of natural disasters (earthquakes, flooding, massive power outages etc.). S&T Bulgaria was commissioned together with MTI Germany to design and implement this complex project for BTC. “In Bulgaria we have excellent technological experts that are already familiar with the needs of BTC from previous projects. We have again demonstrated our quality solutions with this successful contract“, comments Christian Rosner, S&T CEO.

STAR Solution

S&T and MTI have implemented a unique Business Continuity und Disaster Recovery Solution based on the proven “EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility – SRDF/STAR” technology. This technology allows asynchronous mirroring of data between the central data center (CDC) and the newly established BTC backup data center that lies 600 km away, as well as synchronous data replication between the CDC and an additional proxy location in Sofia. This model, with its three locations, ensures data consistency at all times at a minimum of two locations, thus guaranteeing business continuity and disaster recovery for BTC in the event of local or more widespread disasters. Ivaylo Yosiffov, Head of IT at BTC, comments “Excellent design and excellent implementation. Thanks to this solution we can provide our internal customers with the guarantee that no information will be lost, while at the same time meeting our targets in terms of data recovery.”

Secure Benefits

The solution ensures that BTC always has access to two data sets at two different locations, which results in the following benefits:

a) Business Continuity: Business applications continue to run even in the event of hard disk failures.
b) Disaster Recovery: Data recovery can be realized at the affected location within minutes rather than days.
c) Data Center Migration: Application outage is reduced from hours to mere minutes.
d) Reduction/elimination of backup intervals: The use of a second data set means that backup intervals can be completely eliminated.