Bi-Lateral, Real-Time Synchronization

Synergy Credit Union serves the banking needs of businesses and individuals across Saskatchewan, Canada. Synergy has two main locations - a head office and a regional head office - with 11 branch offices across the province.

Within the past year or so, Synergy has expanded through a series of mergers and acquisitions. With specialists spread across different regions, day-to-day operations involving such time-sensitive collaborative activities as loan checking, filling-out and filing forms (i.e., loan applications), etc., posed a challenge as management had become more decentralized.

"We have over 250 users, from executive management to first line member service reps, who require immediate access to 'live' data, such as recently completed loan application forms," said Kyle Leasak, System Administrator based at Synergy's head office. "In order to provide member services, we needed to find a system that synchronized branch office files to our two main regional offices. What's more, these regional offices needed to be bilateral synchronized in real-time, since our data is time-sensitive. For instance, if a lender is asked for consumer mortgage rates, he runs the risk of working from rates a day old if the relevant data is not getting replicated every half hour or so."

Leasak had been "dabbling with sync for a while." They previously relied on a replication product from Veritas, but it didn't allow for real time bilateral synchronization between two offices. "We were struggling with that," said Leasak. "Veritas basically ran on a fixed schedule, one way. Even when we were replicating data as often as one hour apart, there were data 'shortfalls' between head offices. It was not very efficient in facilitating data collaboration. It's good for worksites and that kind of stuff but it didn't do what we needed to do, such as bilateral synchronization."

With their previous "solution" in place, users were saving older files over newer versions. They were also sharing data via email, which according to Leasak was an inefficient use of resources. All of which prompted Leasak "to look elsewhere or for something that more customizable."

Leasak's research lead him to download a 14 day trial version of Peer Software's PeerSync. He was initially looking for a product that allowed for bi-lateral, real-time synchronization, which PeerSync does. Another consideration was its impact on network resources.

"We ran it in testing mode. With voice over IP, video conferencing and regular banking traffic, we needed something that put a minimal hit on line speed. With Veritas, we noticed that this was an issue if not configured correctly. PeerSync's multi-threading and byte replication had very little impact on line speed."

Leasak wanted to set it up he could synchronize branch office files to two main regional offices. The goal was to have a local copy reside at the regional office, which is then replicated between the two head offices in real time. Given the time sensitivity of the data, it was critical that replication occurs almost instantly.

"PeerSync was easy to customize according to our very specific needs. It's very intuitive, each step made perfect sense and was easy to follow."

Whereas users would previously overwrite newer files with older ones, PeerSync's file locking feature eliminated this problem. When a user opens a document, it is locked - other users accessing that same document receive notification that it is read only.

"The reporting was a lot better than other products we've used and tested, including the Micrsosoft products out there. The logs that we've seen are very informational. We didn't have any problems finding info we need or troubleshooting errors. It worked as we expected it to work - which applies not only to the reporting functionality, but to the product as a whole.and given the vast majority of products that under-perform and don't meet expectations, that's as ringing an endorsement as I can give."