The Florida Department of Education (DOE) serves as the single repository of education data from school districts, community colleges, universities, and independent post-secondary institutions throughout the state. In addition to tracking student performance across varying education sectors, the DOE supplies more than 2.6 million students, 3,800 public schools, and 318,000 full-time staff with the necessary supports and services, and serves more than 180,000 teachers in the state.

The Challenge: Build a Recovery Infrastructure that Protects Against Natural Disasters and Eliminates Cost Inefficiencies
 
The DOE is primarily responsible for the statistical analysis and funding activities of 67 school districts within the state of Florida. For more than 30 years, the department's Education Data Center (EDC) has been a repository of collected and analyzed statistical-based data about students, staff, test scores, facilities, buses, and more.

"Our proximity to the Gulf of Mexico put us at high risk of hurricane exposure," says Ted Duncan, EDC bureau chief. "Although we haven't been hit by a hurricane recently, we do have experience with the damage they cause. In 1984, Hurricane Kate came through Tallahassee and took out power for a week and a half. Our building is rated to withstand a Category One hurricane. If a Category Two or higher hurricane came through, our data center would not survive. In an instant, our education system could lose years' worth of critical data. We needed a stronger disaster recovery plan that would protect our data and allow us to be back online in minutes or hours, instead of weeks or months."

In preparation for a disaster, the DOE was paying an annual maintenance fee to SunGard to reserve equipment in their facilities. Duncan realized there were significant cost inefficiencies in that approach and saw an ideal opportunity to save money and still acquire the necessary DR technology and functionality.

"The problem with the SunGard approach was that we were reserving an opportunity," says Duncan. "If a disaster occurred and SunGard ran out of capacity while we're fifth in line, we're just out of luck We were paying close to $120,000 annually for the ability to recover a small percentage of systems for 30 days. If we needed to be at their site longer than 30 days, it would cost several hundred thousand more. In a real-life scenario where a hurricane destroys our building, it's not realistic to be fully recovered and out of their site within 30 days."

Taking DR In-House Provided Freedom and Flexibility

"Looking at the numbers, we realized that building our own offsite recovery center would cost less than SunGard and would give us more functionality," continues Duncan. "There was a lot of freedom and flexibility in this approach. It put us in the driver's seat to reduce our costs and pick and choose our systems. We could test anytime and replicate data and systems to have them on standby mode. If an issue such as a power outage or water intrusion occurred, we could run systems at our DR site and still access the necessary data and applications to be productive. We became owners at that point, and investing in the site really gave us the opportunity for ROI."