Louisiana Supreme Court Disaster Recovery Plan Prevails when Hurricane Gustav Forces Evacuation

Leverages CA’s Disaster Recovery Software to Successfully Protect all Data, Emails and Keep Communications Open throughout Storm

ISLANDIA, N.Y. – CA (NASDAQ: CA) today announced that the Louisiana Supreme Court (LASC) leveraged CA XOsoft High Availability software in successfully executing on their DR plan during Hurricane Gustav. Despite the storm prompting a state-wide evacuation, threatening their headquarters and DR hot-site and causing massive power outages and a court shut-down, the IT staff was able to keep operations running, communications open and protect critical court data and emails.

The key to the success of their DR strategy was using CA XOsoft High Availability to outrun the hurricane as it cut through the state, flawlessly failing over their web servers and email system twice—first from their data center in New Orleans to their hot-site in North Louisiana and then back again. Buoyed by this capability, the IT staff was able to continuously keep operations going and communications open throughout the entire storm.

“It is critical that we protect our case information and keep communications open during an emergency in order to keep the court system running,” said Peter Haas, director of technology for Louisiana Supreme Court. “With our DR plan, driven by CA’s High Availability software, we didn’t loose any court data, a single email or the ability to communicate at any point during Gustav.”

The new DR plan was put in place in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina shut the court down for 2 months. After testing several solutions, the IT team chose CA XOsoft High Availability as the core of their strategy. Following Gustav, with the success of the government’s evacuation plan and zero downtime from their DR implementation, the court reopened just 4 days after the staff left the building.

“My IT team had our DR Plan ‘battle-tested’ when Gustav swept through our state”, said Haas. “We proved the value of using fast and reliable High Availability software that includes replication, continuous data protection and fail-over/fail-back capabilities as the core of our DR plan.”

Throughout the storm, they kept continuous email communications with all their constituencies—including the lower courts, residents, justices, local authorities and lawyers.

“The IT team at Louisiana Supreme Court proved that a solid, reliable and verifiable DR strategy can keep the business running during a disaster,” said Frank Jablonski, senior director, product marketing for Recovery Management at CA. “We congratulate them on a job well done and are glad to play a part in their success.”

To ensure that their DR Plan was regularly tested prior to Gustav, Louisiana State Supreme Court also deployed CA’s DR testing option, which verifies the functionality of the replicated data without impacting business operations or placing the data at risk.

“CA’s software worked during our evaluation, during DR tests and then performed perfectly during an actual emergency,” continued Haas. “We thought the data transfer rate could be an issue as we failed over and back, but CA XOsoft High Availability was amazing, seamlessly adjusting to the conditions.”

LASC also uses CA ARCserve Backup as part of their recovery management strategy to execute regular backups that help safeguard their business information.

About Louisiana Supreme Court

The judicial power of the state, which is the power to interpret the Constitution and the laws of this state, is vested in the Judicial Branch of Government, made up of a supreme court, courts of appeal, district courts and other courts authorized by the Constitution. The supreme court is Louisiana’s highest court and is domiciled in the City of New Orleans. For more information, visit www.lasc.org

About CA

CA (NASDAQ: CA) is the world’s leading independent IT management software company. With CA’s Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision and expertise, organizations can more effectively govern, manage and secure IT to optimize business performance and sustain competitive advantage. For more information, visit www.ca.com.