The widely adopted hybrid IT and multi-cloud environments of today have left companies in a race to keep up with the ever-changing data protection and privacy standards. It is but a three-piece puzzle that keeps businesses running smoothly—confidentiality, integrity, and availability—known as the classical CIA triad of information security. If any of these three pieces is moved at any point in time, the data might get affected or, even worse, lost. In such cases, disaster recovery systems might work their magic, but what’s the point if the business has already been harmed? The downtime that would normally be required to sync the data between remote locations can prove to be both costly and disastrous. All this has resulted in the need to have critical enterprise applications secure and available in multi-cloud environments to ensure every piece of the data still exists even when there has already been significant downtime.
We break away from traditional reactive disaster recovery with a new business continuity standard: virtually 100 percent uptime, anytime, all the time
True Business Continuity and Assurance
Drawing the line between disaster recovery and avoidance, ZeroDown Software is ushering in “a world without downtime®,” with a suite of leading-edge software solutions to match. “We allow businesses to know where their data is and in what state at all times,” says Alan Gin, Founder, and CEO, ZeroDown Software. “Our belief in the value of business continuity exceeds our faith in disaster recovery strategies and commercially available products and services.” Having seen so many organizations go down because of the limitations of widely used single‐vendor implementations, ZeroDown developed the patented AlwaysAvailable™ technology and architecture to enable real multi-vendor business continuity and assurance. It is that coveted peace of mind that the CIOs and CTOs of the world have needed for so long, keeping businesses up-and-running at a fraction of the cost of traditional disaster recovery and high availability systems.
Rewriting the Cloud Migration Story
Previously, enterprises would secure their data at colocation facilities but lacked today’s security and intrusion detection capabilities. Gin remarks that “they would routinely lose transactions in flight during outages attributed to data center migrations, which was often a career-limiting move if a qualified report was filed during an audit of those facilities.” In other words, data that is not available cannot be secure. Nowadays, similar problems exist when moving data to the cloud. By addressing the threat of data loss during in-flight transactions, ZeroDown’s ground-breaking software suite empowers organizations of any size to complete rapid cloud migration without any of the typical attendant business risks. “We believe data migration is a governance and compliance issue,” states Gin. “It is why we developed a secure and resilient cloud migration solution that removes the hidden barrier to cloud adoption—unquantified business risk.” The solution aligns with the present day compliance regulation, Standards for Attestation Standards #16 (SSAE 16), that addresses controls at IT service providers and their data centers via three broad types of Service Organizations Controls (SOC) reports. These new standards address the inherent limitations in any system of internal control, including the possibility of human error and compromised control systems, ensuring data security and compliance for industries such as healthcare and finance that deal with sensitive data.
What has been missing in the cloud migration story for so long is the assurance (Audit & Control) for the C-suites that their data can remain secure at all times and their businesses can run relatively uninterrupted following an outage or data breach. Coalescing Fortinet’s security capabilities with their AlwaysAvailable™ technology, ZeroDown provides enterprise customers who want to migrate to any of the major cloud platforms precisely those assurances through the use of technology. In contrast to disaster recovery, their patented always available solution disaster-proofs any existing infrastructure, providing continuous access to company data, applications, and transactions in the event of network interruptions which would normally cripple the enterprise.
Indeed, ZeroDown Software is ideal for today’s hybrid IT and multi-cloud environments and acts as a bridge to Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle, and Google Cloud. If a business is spread out across multiple Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), then ZeroDown also eliminates the possibility of CSP vendor lock-in for them. As such, the ability to move critical applications/ workloads is present as and when the business requires. Furthermore, if they ever decide to move to another CSP, ZeroDown enables that without transaction loss or system/application downtime. This disaster avoidance method has laid root to a unique approach to business continuity, which can be delivered on any IT infrastructure.
Uninterrupted Business Continuity
All of this means that back in 2010, when cloud computing truly started to hit the mainstream, ZeroDown already had the ingredients in place to support businesses across multi-cloud environments and implementations. By using their MultiSync™ technology, ZeroDown has been delivering operational continuity to their clients for years now, as well as to themselves, which truly shows how much they rely on it. The technology allows for multiple active sites or zones, eliminating the need to create a separate recovery site since they are not application transaction-based nor bound by the distance limitations of other technologies.
We are uniquely positioned to support businesses in mixed cloud environments with full end-to-end security, business continuity, and the certainty that applications and workloads can work completely uninterrupted
ZeroDown’s non-intrusive, agent less, and hardware-agnostic software is easy to install on any platform, from on-premises data centers to private and public clouds. It overcomes the limitations of disaster recovery architecture with novel topology and protocols. In combination with Fortinet, “we bring the highest and best use of information protection to Fortinet’s customers by squaring the circle of Secure and AlwaysAvailable™,” explains Gin. In Business Continuity as a Service (BCaaS™), ZeroDown has tailored a unique solution to the cloud which enables clients to lose zero transactions during the migration. What is more, it allows them to avoid downtime in the first place and hence eliminate consequent costs to revenue and reputation.
IT professionals, cloud consultants, and systems integrators can deploy the technology to fast-track application migration projects whilst delivering the value adds of mitigated risks, built-in cost savings, and reduced cycle times. Furthermore, companies can run their applications in active-active mode during the migration from their environment to a CSP, or across different clouds. After the migration, the software can continue to operate, delivering business continuity assurance to any newly implemented hybrid IT or multi-cloud environment.
“We break away from traditional reactive disaster recovery with a new business continuity standard: virtually 100 percent uptime, anytime, all the time,” asserts Gin. As an example, MyFailSafe.com has been able to deliver continuous service to their email clients since activation on July 15, 2004. To this day, there has never been an interruption of service for any cause—scheduled or unscheduled maintenance, server upgrades, virus attacks, distributed denial of service attack, or natural disasters. “No downtime, for any cause, whatsoever,” emphasizes Gin.
Another great example would be ZenVault Medical, a private electronic medical records company with thousands of online customers. Ever since 2010, when their services were first introduced publicly, ZeroDown’s BCaaS solution has ensured ZenVault’s complete business continuity, with no interruption of service ever and precisely zero downtime. This not only speaks volumes about the value proposition that ZeroDown Software brings but also shows their commitment to long-term partnerships and dedication to their clients—all virtues of a great company culture that is bound to thrive.
Staying Future-Ready
With deep domain expertise as consultants and auditors in the realm of IT security, Gin founded ZeroNines (now called ZeroDown Software) together with co-founders Sean Myers and Keith Fukuhara who now serve on the company’s board and as the CTO, respectively. What started out as a compelling vision of “a world without downtime” has become a reality. In today’s arena of digital transformation, ZeroDown has proven adaptive to each huge leap forward in software architectures and next-generation innovations in technology.
“In the long run, the only sustainable competitive advantage is to learn faster than the competition.” This unique philosophy by Peter Senge has been the driving force behind ZeroDown’s team for years. It has caused an unrelenting curiosity and quest for innovation in each one of their employees. “If we fully embrace this way of thinking, we understand our self-worth as individuals much more,” comments Gin. All of this has transcended into their stellar results and growth as a company. It is what keeps ZeroDown connected to the action—always ready to push the envelope in IT.
Going forward, ZeroDown will continue to enhance their product line to accommodate new markets in the face of ever-growing IT challenges. “We are uniquely positioned to support businesses in mixed cloud environments with full end-to-end security, business continuity, and the certainty that applications and workloads can work completely uninterrupted,” concludes Gin. “We are all about helping organizations with their digital transformation and multi-cloud journey with keys to availability and assurance.
By Jasmin Alic
