Green Bay Packers toughen defense with SaaS disaster recovery and business continuity plans

Green Bay Packers toughen defense with SaaS disaster recovery and business continuity plans

Wayne Wichlacz

GREEN BAY- The Green Bay Packers will toughen their IT defense with disaster recovery and plans with a partnership announced with Venyu. The company offers enterprise software via software as a service (SaaS) solutions for data protection, availability and disaster recovery (DR). The solution called AmeriVault offers online data backup and recovery solutions. The Packers join other professional sports teams partnering with Venyu to outsource their off – site data backup and recovery strategies.
The Packers will utilize Venyu to provide remote backup for their production servers including SharePoint and SQL. The team chose to modernize their data backup and recovery routines following encouragement by the NFL to consider repercussions of natural disasters and the years of success other franchises have had leveraging the Internet for these services.
“We needed a provider that could backup selected data and store it remotely, while also allowing us immediate access to our files in the event of an emergency,” said Wayne Wichlacz, Director of Information Technology for the Green Bay Packers. “Venyu’s services run as an extension of our IT department, allowing us to focus on our core operations with the confidence that our data is safe.”
Wichlacz was hired as the first full-time computer professional for the Green Bay Packers in April of 1993 and has over 23 years in the Information Technology field. Wayne guided planning and technology efforts through the 5 year Lambeau Field Renovation process with the grand opening on September 7, 2003 against the Minnesota Vikings. Wichlacz has an IT Team of 7 people working to support the entire football and business organizations along with bringing new technologies to drive new business opportunities and operational efficiencies.
Until recently, small to medium enterprises like the Green Bay Packers franchise had limited chooses to automate offsite storage to multiple geographies while providing fast recovery. The advent of affordable storage, fast internet speeds, and server virtualization gives organizations new ways to ensure recovery in the event of an outage or disaster.
“Just as SMEs can affordably and easily remotely access their corporate networks via the internet, these same advances have found their way into backup and disaster recovery technologies,” said Jerome Wendt, President of analyst firm DCIG, Inc. “These online advances coupled with new server and storage virtualization technologies alter what SMEs can expect to accomplish, and how quickly they can expect to deliver backup and DR for their applications.”