When a Central Texas industrial manufacturer found critical gaps in the way its data was protected, CMIT Solutions of Austin Central delivered a 95-hour enterprise backup deployment that put the Unitrends platform into full production across every server and endpoint, establishing a tested Recovery Time Objective (RTO) under four hours and reclaiming roughly $13,000 a year in IT labor.
In a high-throughput, capital-intensive manufacturing operation, data loss is not an abstract risk. Production records, procurement contracts, laboratory specifications, and compliance documentation are the operational backbone of the business. The distance between having backups and having verified, restorable backups is exactly where most companies get hurt, and this manufacturer decided to close it before an incident forced the issue.
Project Snapshot
- Client: Industrial manufacturer
- Location: Central Texas
- Service: Data Backup & Recovery
- Scope: 95 hours — trial, configuration, production deployment, and validation of an enterprise backup platform
- Outcome: Unitrends in full production with a tested sub-4-hour RTO and about $13,000 in annual IT labor recovered
The Challenge
The company had been relying on a patchwork of aging backup tools. There was no centralized management, Recovery Point Objectives (RPO, the maximum tolerable amount of data loss) were inconsistent from system to system, and disaster recovery had never been successfully tested end to end. An internal IT audit surfaced the detail that made the situation urgent: several critical servers had not produced a verifiable backup in more than 30 days.
In a worst-case scenario, a ransomware attack or a hardware failure would have meant days or weeks of recovery time and millions of dollars in potential production losses, with no way to know in advance which systems could actually be restored.
The Solution
CMIT Solutions of Austin Central started with a structured trial rather than a purchase order. The team deployed Unitrends in a controlled environment, ran real recovery scenarios, and measured backup and restore performance against the company's defined RPO and RTO targets. Only once the platform proved it could hit those numbers did the project move to production.
The full rollout covered servers and endpoints, with scheduled backup jobs, cloud offsite replication for disaster recovery, and automated alerting wired into daily operations so that a failed job becomes a notification instead of an unpleasant discovery months later.
What We Delivered
- Unitrends enterprise backup fully deployed across servers and endpoints
- Cloud offsite replication configured for disaster recovery
- Backup monitoring and alerting integrated into daily operations
- Full recovery tests conducted and documented
- Staff trained on recovery procedures
The Results
Industry data puts the cost of unplanned downtime in manufacturing at an average of $260,000 per hour. By establishing a tested backup infrastructure with a sub-4-hour RTO, the manufacturer effectively insured itself against a catastrophic loss event, replacing an unknown recovery timeline with a measured one that leadership can plan around.
The savings show up in payroll too. IT staff time previously spent manually checking backup jobs, an estimated 5 hours every week, was handed back to higher-value work, worth roughly $13,000 annually at fully burdened IT labor rates.
Key Takeaways
- A backup you have never restored is a hypothesis, not a safeguard; recovery testing is what turns it into protection.
- Pilot before you deploy: validating a platform against your own RPO and RTO targets prevents expensive surprises during a real outage.
- Manual backup checking is hidden payroll; automating monitoring returned about 5 hours a week, roughly $13,000 a year.
Want backups your Austin business can actually count on? Contact CMIT Solutions of Austin Central about Data Backup & Recovery.
