Duro previously housed its critical data systems and platforms in a company-owned facility in a residential Kentucky neighborhood. After quantifying the cost of downtime that resulted from power outages over the years, Duro’s IT staff decided to research the feasibility of colocating their infrastructure in a third-party data center.

Duro Designer Business Division also lacked sufficient in-house IT resources to ensure a well-planned and tested data backup and disaster recovery strategy.

An existing Telephony and Managed Services customer, Duro investigated CBTS’ data center offerings. After conducting risk management and internal business impact analysis, both Duro business divisions decided to relocate to CBTS’ Tier 3 data center in Cincinnati to take advantage of its secure and efficient server environment features.

Following a smooth migration of its data systems and platforms to CBTS’ data center, the Duro Designer Business Unit (with an IT Manager as its sole IT personnel) is now also able to take advantage of the CBTS Virtual Data Center (VDC) offering for the company’s data backup and disaster recovery.

With connectivity established, backing up Duro’s data “virtually” at a separate CBTS data center site offers a convenient, time-saving, and secure option for the company, which was previously employing tape backup procedures.

Additional features of CBTS’ VDC offering include full redundancy in a monitored and managed environment, as well as on-demand power and capacity, should Duro seek additional computing capacity for new applications, development projects, seasonal or unpredictable server availability or testing accommodations in the future, or when existing servers become obsolete and need to be refreshed.

In this project, CBTS offered:

• Network Design
• Server Virtualization
• Data Backup
• Network Management and Monitoring
• Project Management and Quality Assurance
• Utility Model Monthly Billing

A certified CBTS Project Manager, experienced deployment engineers, a VMware Certified Professional (VCP), and an Account Manager worked closely with Duro’s IT manager to provide traditional and virtual data center solutions. A CBTS VMware Certified Professional provides continued consultation on the power/capacity provisioning and disaster recovery features of VDC.

Duro Bag Manufacturing Company, founded in 1953, is the largest full-service paper bag manufacturer in the world. With corporate offices in Northern Kentucky, Duro employs more than 2,500 employees at 12 manufacturing facilities, a team of regional salespeople, and an extensive national broker network. To further expand its geographical reach and enhance the company's full-line capabilities, the manufacturer has purchased some of its larger competitors.

Historically comprised of two divisions, the Standard Products Division and the Designer Division, which produce the broadest range of machine-made paper shopping bags in the industry, Duro separated its divisions into two business entities in 2008.