Sorry, the language specified is not available for this page

    GAVS Technologies

    GAVS engaged Sungard AS as a subcontractor to host & manage a disaster-tolerant IT environment that would meet Gerber’s requirements for system availability and data integrity.

    Download
    Overview

    case-study-logo-gavs-technologies-200x100

    For more than eight years, GAVS Technologies has provided SAP infrastructure management services to Gerber Technology, a Connecticut-based provider of an integrated end-to-end platform for the apparel, furniture and technical textiles industries. The connected process features industry-leading 2D/3D CAD, PLM and Industry 4.0 enabled Smart Machines that can reduce lead time from several months to as little as a few days. When Gerber migrated its SAP applications from mainframes to virtualized servers three years ago, GAVS enlisted Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) to host and manage the primary and secondary IT infrastructure and provide data replication services. GAVS continues to oversee the full SAP environment for Gerber, including operations management, relying on Sungard AS to ensure rapid recovery of Gerber’s business-critical applications and data in the event of a disaster.

    RESULTS

    • Collaboration between GAVS and Sungard AS delivers nimble SAP environment with proven infrastructure resilience
    • GAVS Zero Incident FrameworkTM approach applies Artificial Intelligence (AI) and proactive measures to address incidents before they impact operations
    • Sungard AS multi-site infrastructure and data replication provide rapid failover and data recovery to meet stringent DR requirements

    SERVICES

    • Infrastructure Management for primary and secondary data centers
    • Cloud Network Services
    • Cloud SAP Infrastructure Services
    • Managed Cloud Secondary Site Failover Services
    • Colocation Services
    • Backup Services – replication using VMware SRM

    About GAVS Technologies

    GAVS Technologies (GAVS) is a global provider of IT consulting and systems integration services. The company has deep expertise in AI-based operations, predictive analytics, and robotics-led infrastructure management services, and applies its Zero Incident FrameworkTM approach to proactively detect incidents and resolve them with minimal human involvement.

    GAVS always looks for ways to delight our end-customers, so we asked Sungard AS for tools and proactive measures to help minimize incidents and better understand the status of every server at Gerber. They took us from a handful of critical incidents to zero in one month, the result of close collaboration and a deep understanding of the environment.

    Arockia Jeyasudhan, Consulting Manager, GAVS Technologies

    Challenge

    Assuring business continuity with resilient SAP infrastructure

    Gerber Technology delivers industry-leading software and automation solutions to help manufacturers dramatically improve their productivity and more effectively manage and connect the supply chain. In apparel, for instance, Gerber helps fashion brands move toward an automated, made-to-measure supply chain with its tools for 2D-to-3D pattern design that can feed directly to digital printers and Gerber's Industry 4.0-enabled cutting systems. The integrated process – driven by Gerber's product lifecycle management suite – transforms what takes traditional apparel companies six months to complete to a matter of a few hours with microfactory, from concept to consumer.

    With a customer base that's so intensely focused on time-to-market, Gerber has little tolerance for disruption in its own business systems. Gerber relies on SAP applications to run nearly all its critical business operations, and for two decades has counted on GAVS Technologies to manage and evolve the SAP environment to keep pace with Gerber's business growth and change.

    Three years ago, GAVS directed a major system and data migration project for Gerber, leading the transition of the full suite of SAP applications from an IBM AIX environment to a virtualized infrastructure based on VMware and Red Hat Linux. GAVS provided the project management and system integration expertise to drive the four-month project. For the underlying hardware, GAVS engaged Sungard AS as a subcontractor to host and manage a disaster-tolerant IT environment that would meet Gerber’s stringent requirements for system availability and data integrity.

    Solution

    Managed recovery services that protect people, systems and data

    A team from Sungard AS configured the new multi-site environment, with primary infrastructure hosted at the Sungard AS Philadelphia data center and recovery infrastructure at its Aurora, Colorado data center. Sungard AS managed the data migration to the new environment and now provides a dedicated network to enable data replication between the sites, capturing all changes to Gerber's Oracle database in two geographically dispersed storage arrays.

    As part of the initial deployment, GAVS and Sungard AS worked closely to tune and test the environment and achieve the service level agreements (SLAs) committed to Gerber: a 60-minute recovery point objective (RPO) for data and virtual machines for server recovery.

    For ongoing management, GAVS applies its expertise in AI-based operations and predictive analytics with a suite of proprietary tools that closely monitor system health across many metrics. The tools and expertise are central to the GAVS Zero Incident Framework, which aims to detect incidents before they occur and apply remedies with minimal manual intervention. For Gerber, this approach translates into a highly stable environment for its business-critical applications.

    The Sungard AS team supports GAVS and Gerber with its own proactive approach to infrastructure management, monitoring and reporting on key indicators including CPU and RAM use, network bandwidth, file system and capacity. The Sungard AS team reviews all metrics in weekly check-in meetings and monthly service update meetings with GAVS. When values fall outside of specified ranges, Sungard AS and GAVS collaborate to diagnose and resolve the issue before it can impact Gerber's operations.

    Solving an intermittent issue; preparing for the future

    Shortly after Gerber's move to the new virtualized environment, an intermittent issue occurred, affecting the replication of data in the Oracle database. The issue was troublesome because it caused a lag in data synchronization across the two data centers and had the potential to impact Gerber's SLA for a 60-minute RPO. Sungard AS assembled its incident management team and worked with GAVS to analyze root causes and come up with a solution.

    "We looked initially at network and other possible infrastructure causes, and then discovered the issue: usage patterns in Gerber's business units that generated very high peaks in the data change rate," says Rajendran D, Client Systems Principal, Sungard AS. "These sometimes exceeded the capacity of our VMware vSphere Site Recovery Manager (SRM) replication environment."

    The addition of a dedicated server for replication has resolved the intermittent issue for now, but Gerber's continued business growth will soon push the solution to its operational limits, necessitating a move to a higher-capacity replication solution. To prepare for that day, GAVS and Sungard AS tested an alternate data replication approach based on AWS Cloud Endure. That solution, already packaged as a standard Sungard AS offering known as Cloud Recovery – AWS, has ample headroom to handle Gerber's business growth and potential future acquisitions – and easily achieve Gerber's specified RPO.

    Benefit

    Two service providers, one set of SLAs

    GAVS and Sungard AS continue to strengthen their collaboration as they support Gerber's evolving needs. The GAVS team has numerous application development projects ongoing, helping Gerber to capitalize on the power of SAP to support the company's laser focus on streamlined business operations. The Sungard AS team stays ahead of infrastructure health to assure the solid, uninterrupted service that powers Gerber's daily business.

    In the prior two years, GAVS and Sungard AS logged incidents and worked together to resolve them within the contracted SLAs – before the incidents could impact Gerber's systems. The two service providers have now developed a proven, collaborative approach that leverages the skill sets of the combined team, as well as the IP and proactive approaches of each provider.

    We have many engagements in which we join forces with Sungard AS on the right solution, from bringing on new servers to upgrading infrastructure, to moving quickly into the AWS cloud – in any part of the world. Sungard AS continually provides us with ideas and solutions to make the customer experience better, which allows us to be a trusted advisor to Gerber.

    Arockia Jeyasudhan, Consulting Manager, GAVS Technologies

    case-study-logo-gavs-technologies-200x100

    For more than eight years, GAVS Technologies has provided SAP infrastructure management services to Gerber Technology, a Connecticut-based provider of an integrated end-to-end platform for the apparel, furniture and technical textiles industries. The connected process features industry-leading 2D/3D CAD, PLM and Industry 4.0 enabled Smart Machines that can reduce lead time from several months to as little as a few days. When Gerber migrated its SAP applications from mainframes to virtualized servers three years ago, GAVS enlisted Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) to host and manage the primary and secondary IT infrastructure and provide data replication services. GAVS continues to oversee the full SAP environment for Gerber, including operations management, relying on Sungard AS to ensure rapid recovery of Gerber’s business-critical applications and data in the event of a disaster.

    RESULTS

    • Collaboration between GAVS and Sungard AS delivers nimble SAP environment with proven infrastructure resilience
    • GAVS Zero Incident FrameworkTM approach applies Artificial Intelligence (AI) and proactive measures to address incidents before they impact operations
    • Sungard AS multi-site infrastructure and data replication provide rapid failover and data recovery to meet stringent DR requirements

    SERVICES

    • Infrastructure Management for primary and secondary data centers
    • Cloud Network Services
    • Cloud SAP Infrastructure Services
    • Managed Cloud Secondary Site Failover Services
    • Colocation Services
    • Backup Services – replication using VMware SRM

    About GAVS Technologies

    GAVS Technologies (GAVS) is a global provider of IT consulting and systems integration services. The company has deep expertise in AI-based operations, predictive analytics, and robotics-led infrastructure management services, and applies its Zero Incident FrameworkTM approach to proactively detect incidents and resolve them with minimal human involvement.

    GAVS always looks for ways to delight our end-customers, so we asked Sungard AS for tools and proactive measures to help minimize incidents and better understand the status of every server at Gerber. They took us from a handful of critical incidents to zero in one month, the result of close collaboration and a deep understanding of the environment.

    Arockia Jeyasudhan, Consulting Manager, GAVS Technologies

    Assuring business continuity with resilient SAP infrastructure

    Gerber Technology delivers industry-leading software and automation solutions to help manufacturers dramatically improve their productivity and more effectively manage and connect the supply chain. In apparel, for instance, Gerber helps fashion brands move toward an automated, made-to-measure supply chain with its tools for 2D-to-3D pattern design that can feed directly to digital printers and Gerber's Industry 4.0-enabled cutting systems. The integrated process – driven by Gerber's product lifecycle management suite – transforms what takes traditional apparel companies six months to complete to a matter of a few hours with microfactory, from concept to consumer.

    With a customer base that's so intensely focused on time-to-market, Gerber has little tolerance for disruption in its own business systems. Gerber relies on SAP applications to run nearly all its critical business operations, and for two decades has counted on GAVS Technologies to manage and evolve the SAP environment to keep pace with Gerber's business growth and change.

    Three years ago, GAVS directed a major system and data migration project for Gerber, leading the transition of the full suite of SAP applications from an IBM AIX environment to a virtualized infrastructure based on VMware and Red Hat Linux. GAVS provided the project management and system integration expertise to drive the four-month project. For the underlying hardware, GAVS engaged Sungard AS as a subcontractor to host and manage a disaster-tolerant IT environment that would meet Gerber’s stringent requirements for system availability and data integrity.

    Managed recovery services that protect people, systems and data

    A team from Sungard AS configured the new multi-site environment, with primary infrastructure hosted at the Sungard AS Philadelphia data center and recovery infrastructure at its Aurora, Colorado data center. Sungard AS managed the data migration to the new environment and now provides a dedicated network to enable data replication between the sites, capturing all changes to Gerber's Oracle database in two geographically dispersed storage arrays.

    As part of the initial deployment, GAVS and Sungard AS worked closely to tune and test the environment and achieve the service level agreements (SLAs) committed to Gerber: a 60-minute recovery point objective (RPO) for data and virtual machines for server recovery.

    For ongoing management, GAVS applies its expertise in AI-based operations and predictive analytics with a suite of proprietary tools that closely monitor system health across many metrics. The tools and expertise are central to the GAVS Zero Incident Framework, which aims to detect incidents before they occur and apply remedies with minimal manual intervention. For Gerber, this approach translates into a highly stable environment for its business-critical applications.

    The Sungard AS team supports GAVS and Gerber with its own proactive approach to infrastructure management, monitoring and reporting on key indicators including CPU and RAM use, network bandwidth, file system and capacity. The Sungard AS team reviews all metrics in weekly check-in meetings and monthly service update meetings with GAVS. When values fall outside of specified ranges, Sungard AS and GAVS collaborate to diagnose and resolve the issue before it can impact Gerber's operations.

    Solving an intermittent issue; preparing for the future

    Shortly after Gerber's move to the new virtualized environment, an intermittent issue occurred, affecting the replication of data in the Oracle database. The issue was troublesome because it caused a lag in data synchronization across the two data centers and had the potential to impact Gerber's SLA for a 60-minute RPO. Sungard AS assembled its incident management team and worked with GAVS to analyze root causes and come up with a solution.

    "We looked initially at network and other possible infrastructure causes, and then discovered the issue: usage patterns in Gerber's business units that generated very high peaks in the data change rate," says Rajendran D, Client Systems Principal, Sungard AS. "These sometimes exceeded the capacity of our VMware vSphere Site Recovery Manager (SRM) replication environment."

    The addition of a dedicated server for replication has resolved the intermittent issue for now, but Gerber's continued business growth will soon push the solution to its operational limits, necessitating a move to a higher-capacity replication solution. To prepare for that day, GAVS and Sungard AS tested an alternate data replication approach based on AWS Cloud Endure. That solution, already packaged as a standard Sungard AS offering known as Cloud Recovery – AWS, has ample headroom to handle Gerber's business growth and potential future acquisitions – and easily achieve Gerber's specified RPO.

    Two service providers, one set of SLAs

    GAVS and Sungard AS continue to strengthen their collaboration as they support Gerber's evolving needs. The GAVS team has numerous application development projects ongoing, helping Gerber to capitalize on the power of SAP to support the company's laser focus on streamlined business operations. The Sungard AS team stays ahead of infrastructure health to assure the solid, uninterrupted service that powers Gerber's daily business.

    In the prior two years, GAVS and Sungard AS logged incidents and worked together to resolve them within the contracted SLAs – before the incidents could impact Gerber's systems. The two service providers have now developed a proven, collaborative approach that leverages the skill sets of the combined team, as well as the IP and proactive approaches of each provider.

    We have many engagements in which we join forces with Sungard AS on the right solution, from bringing on new servers to upgrading infrastructure, to moving quickly into the AWS cloud – in any part of the world. Sungard AS continually provides us with ideas and solutions to make the customer experience better, which allows us to be a trusted advisor to Gerber.

    Arockia Jeyasudhan, Consulting Manager, GAVS Technologies