Ricoh selects Riverbed SteelStore

Ricoh, a Japanese multinational imaging and electronics company, was faced with the same data storage challenges many companies face today. As data grows, so does the cost of backing it up. Using tape or disk is time-consuming and costly, and disaster recovery (DR) strategies are often not cost-effective or geared for immediate data recovery. Ricoh Management Transformation Division, which manages systems infrastructure for all the companies within the group, wanted a backup system that could provide a return on investment companywide. Cloud storage offered cost-effective backup, greater reliability, and faster recovery, and Ricoh decided to deploy SteelStore to back up mission-critical systems at the corporate office to HP Cloud Object Storage.

Through de-duplication, SteelStore reduced the volume of data needing to be backed up by 90%. With less data traveling over the network, backup time was greatly reduced. The virtual capabilities of SteelStore also reduced total backup costs by letting Ricoh start small to minimise deployment costs; then accelerated backup by moving only the right data at the right time. This flexibility allows companies to get started right away without making major changes to existing backup systems and the way they operate.

Ricoh can use its existing Internet environment without a VPN or other services since SteelStore encrypts data in transit using SSL v3. Data at rest is encrypted using AES 256-bit. Even in the unlikely case of data being decrypted, security is maintained since the data itself is fragmented and de-duplicated, preventing the original data from being reproduced by third parties. This ensures data security and integrity when using the public cloud. Additionally, SteelStore allows Ricoh to instantly restore data in a separate location if the data centre is affected by a disaster.

“Moving to cloud storage for data backup and recovery has dramatically reduced costs associated with protecting critical data,” said Toshiyuki Miyakoshi, senior specialist for System Infrastructure Section at the Information Infrastructure Control Department of Ricoh’s Management Transformation Division. “Riverbed SteelStore allows us to leverage the benefits of cloud backup and provides reassurance that data is both backed up and easily accessible.”

Riverbed SteelStore and the Riverbed Application Performance Platform™
Riverbed SteelStore seamlessly integrates cloud storage into a company’s existing infrastructure to streamline data protection and reduce risk while reducing storage and data protection costs by up to 80%. With built-in replication capabilities, SteelStore provides instant data access at a second location while leveraging the industry’s most cost-effective cloud storage. By deploying SteelStore as part of a company’s data protection or archiving strategy, IT teams eliminate the headaches of tape-based systems, improve disaster recovery (DR) readiness and seamlessly integrate the cloud’s high data durability and declining pricing into their infrastructure to deliver increased flexibility and ROI within months. SteelStore was named Product of the Year by Storage Magazine-SearchStorage.com in the category for backup hardware.

Riverbed SteelStore is part of the Riverbed Application Performance Platform™, the most complete platform to enable organisations to embrace location-independent computing, so that business objectives – not technical constraints – drive how applications and data are delivered.