Paul Smith cuts tapes from backup design

Fashion designer installs Windows R2 beta for continuous replication

Fashion designer Paul Smith is using server technology to cut costs and improve efficiency.

The retailer has revamped its storage and backup capabilities using a beta version of Windows Server 2003 R2.

The software has allowed Paul Smith to stop using tapes to back up its data. It eliminates the need for time-consuming manual processes by non-skilled staff, saving one day a week in productivity and £12,000 a year in costs.

‘We have branch offices around the world that used tape for data storage and backup,’ said James Hunter-Paterson, network architect at Paul Smith.

‘We were not getting reliable or frequent backups and had no control over where the tapes ended up, so we were not sure if the data from each branch office would be recoverable.’

When staff, including designers, saved files in the past, the storage system would rewrite them, using unnecessarily large amounts of network bandwidth.

‘We no longer invest in tape hardware,’ said Hunter-Paterson. ‘The extra management control that Windows Server 2003 R2 has given us means that data is continually streaming back to a central storage point in head office.’

File compression and storage management features in R2 have freed up 50 per cent of the retailer’s network bandwidth.

‘By giving designers a single set of folders, changes that are made to a design at a branch office, for example, are replicated to our head office,’ said Hunter-Paterson.

‘The server saves updated files to the folder, replicating just the changes instead of rewriting

the whole file, which sometimes would have taken all night.’

Another benefit is that staff now are always working on the most up-to-date files and designs.