Case Study: Russell Reynolds Associates achieves stronger business continuity and reduced costs with Microsoft Azure

Global leadership advisory and executive search firm strengthens, simplifies business continuity with hybrid cloud

Russell Reynolds Associates is a global leadership advisory and executive search firm with hundreds of consultants across dozens of offices. The firm struggled with duplicated datacenter infrastructure and cumbersome, costly tape-based backups that consumed IT resources and distracted staff from strategic work and innovation.

To fix this it adopted a Microsoft hybrid cloud approach—using System Center DPM to move backups to Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery (with ExpressRoute) as its DR site. The change eliminated tapes, halved the secondary datacenter footprint, cut RPO from 24 to 6 hours, simplified DR testing, freed a full-time staff member for strategic projects, and lowered costs so the firm can invest more in innovation.

Russell Reynolds Associates

David W. Pfister

Director of Global Distributed Infrastructure and Client Services