James "Jim" Eberle, Chief Operating Officer latest blog jim.eberle@inovis.com As Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Eberle oversees operations, implementations and customer support for Inovis. He is responsible for driving peak performance across Inovis' infrastructure. From the availability of our network to customer support responsiveness, Mr. Eberle and his team work to ensure that Inovis consistently delivers the quality and efficiency our customers expect.

Q: Why did Inovis make the move to the new data center?

A: Inovis made the decision at the beginning of 2006 to upgrade Inovis' data center. At that time, we were in a Tier Two Data Center and we decided we wanted to upgrade to a more modern and more technology-oriented Tier Four Data Center, which is the highest classification possible. Tier Four has the appropriate conditions associated with what's needed for a high availability, redundant, reliable and highly secure environment, which we identified as essential for our go-forward strategy. It was what was right for our business, and more important, it was what was right for our customers.

Q: What steps were involved in planning for the move?

A: Built on a newly architected infrastructure and hosted in a world-class data center, the Inovis Multi-Enterprise Expert Services Hub (MESH) platform marks the completion of a two-year initiative to systematically upgrade all architectural and physical elements of its network and consolidate all customers onto a single, modern platform. We began very detailed planning in the beginning of 2006 to ensure a smooth transition for our customers and a scalable growth strategy for the future. The actual implementation began in the second half of 2007, with the build-out of our new Tier Four Data Center in Atlanta near our global headquarters.

Q: What was the actual migration to the new data center like?

A: In early 2007, we began phased, controlled migrations of our customers based on connectivity type, which we finished in May. Next, we performed testing and dry runs of the migration itself. The execution of the actual migration took place the last weekend in June 2007. We migrated 20,000 of our customers with very minimal impact. As a matter of fact, one of our customers said, "Oh, did you guys do a firewall upgrade?" They didn't realize that we moved the entire data center during that maintenance window—not that we hadn't informed them of our plans!

Q: What was the benefit of moving for the customer?

A: Inovis customers are going to receive significant value by being in our new data center. First, one hundred percent of our customers will be on a single, high availability platform. Second, we're going to have modern switched communication, which enables us to switch communications from one location to another in an emergency in a matter of seconds. Third, we're going to have disaster recovery capabilities, which we provided in the past but will be significantly improved. And last, they're going to have the ability to expand their business without having to worry about high volume or performance.

Q: How does the Multi-Enterprise Expert Services Hub (MESH) platform support Inovis' Business Community Management model?

A: With the Inovis MESH platform, Inovis is delivering industry-leading quality to support its customers in managing their respective business and trading communities. Now nearly 315,000 trading relationships are benefiting from significant improvements in reliability delivered by the Inovis MESH Platform. The new Inovis MESH platform's systems and processes are designed to be 100 percent available and the underlying data center is designed to operate at 99.995 percent availability. The data center availability improvement represents a shift from 99.95 percent to 99.995 percent, or a 90 percent incremental increase in available service time.

Q: How will the MESH platform deliver greater visibility and efficiencies?

A: Customers can be confident that their data and managed files will be delivered with high levels of security, reliability and compliance. With enhanced visibility and supplier scorecard capabilities built upon the Inovis Multi-Enterprise Expert Services Hub (MESH) platform, customers can have instant access to information on the status of transactions across the supply chain-setting a foundation for superior customer and partner collaboration.