Regulatory scrutiny and real-world risk
A major stock exchange was required to conduct a data center failover test due to regulatory requirements. This test involved thousands of critical activities to coordinate the transition of thousands of services. It needed to prove to the regulator that it was able to safely failover from its primary data center to its secondary data center and back again.
The team had used spreadsheets for similar activities before but had never executed a test of this scale and complexity. Using spreadsheets for other activities had left them struggling with the ability to orchestrate activities amongst a plethora of siloed teams, so they needed a different solution that brought everyone together.
It was critical for them to get this right not only to satisfy the regulator but also to be prepared for a real-world incident. If they were unable to fail over in a real disaster it would disrupt their business and put clients at risk. The exchange is considered critical national infrastructure, so the knock-on effects would be enormous if it were to have a major outage.
Reduced time by 80%
Cutover enabled the exchange to successfully execute its primary data center failover test. Using Cutover reduced the amount of planning and preparation time by 80% compared to manual tools and processes, and those running the event could keep track via the main dashboard in the control room while senior stakeholders monitored the event with their own devices.
Cutover also provided the ability to track performance and monitor the failover of each application with detailed real-time analytics - something that could not be done using spreadsheets.
Protected against outages
With Cutover, the stock exchange was able to significantly reduce its level of risk and prove to regulators that it was resilient against outages. It can now ensure that the exchange and the businesses that rely on it are protected against outages that could cause huge economic disruption.
The exchange is now able to conduct full data center failovers every six months as coordinating in Cutover has made the process easily repeatable, enabling standardization across the group and its ever-increasing technology estate. It has also expanded the scope to involve more applications, people, tasks, and complexity.
