Platform Lab helps IBP perform more disaster recovery testing at a lower cost

Why pay to fly a whole team of people to a distant location to perform disaster recovery testing, when there's a great facility right in your own backyard? That's the question of parity and simple economics that led Installed Building Products to Platform Lab for its disaster recovery testing projects.

IBP is a dynamic, fast growing privately-owned company and one of the largest building materials contractors of its kind in the United States. The company specializes in the sale and installation of a wide range of building products, including insulation, shelving units, shower door manufacturing and installation, custom mirrors, foundation waterproofing and more.

And IBP is a company that believes in disaster recovery testing. Platform Lab, the nation's only non-profit IT testing and training facility, allows them to act on that belief with speed, value and confidence.

"Prior to forming a relationship with Platform Lab, we had a contract with another provider that has an east coast hot site," said Marty Luffy, CIO of IBP. "But as we looked at the logistical costs of performing complete and proper testing on the east coast, we realized that doing it at Platform Lab would accomplish 95% of what we needed, with a lot less investment. The simple fact was just taking my people to the eastern facility would cost more than using Platform Lab in whole. From an executive standpoint, we've been extremely satisfied."

For a firm like IBP, a strong company that's growing rapidly, costs and resources are of critical importance. Platform Lab's value allows IBP to accomplish disaster recovery testing more effectively and efficiently. Without the negatives of travel, the company gets a lot more done and can use Platform Lab more efficiently because the Lab is readily available. To Luffy, it all means "If it weren t for Platform Lab, we would do less testing or maybe none at all."

But no testing isn't really an option, because as Luffy puts it, "I anticipate and expect that someone is going to be asking for [our recovery plan] explicitly. We have a centralized data processing facility here and all our billing runs through it. If I were down because the facility was unavailable, I would need to do something."

So IBP turns to Platform Lab and leverages the fact that the Lab hits all the right sweet spots -- cost, capabilities and service. And IBP has now performed two tests at Platform Lab per year for the past two years. It is a relationship working at full speed.

Luffy said that using Platform Lab has allowed IBP to understand what their environment looks like during any given period. It enabled them to organize their documentation and help the company engage in critical cross training since the Lab lets everyone work on the same thing in one room. "It allows for a skills exchange that helps us plan how we would rebuild our total environment from scratch," said Luffy. "It also forces us to know that our backups are good."

All in all, IBP is experiencing what Platform Lab has touted since its inception -- complete disaster recovery testing, right here in Ohio, at a fraction of the cost, and with superior service. "From an overall perspective, Platform Lab was very flexible in working with us. Steve [Gruetter, Platform Lab's director] even went out and acquired tape technology that they did not have that we needed. He put everything in place so we could hold our DR testing and be successful with it."

States Gruetter "IBP represents a milestone for Platform Lab and their management should be commended; IBP is the first firm to perform DR testing at the Lab not mandated to do so by Sarbanes-Oxley or HIPAA. They perform testing because it is good business practice."