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    Ex Libris Establishes New Second Data Centers in Three Regions

    Overview

    Ex Libris is pleased to announce the establishment of a second data center in each of the following regions: the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific, in addition to the existing regional data centers. The second data center in each of the regions will support expected growth in the number of customers in the region and strengthen our business continuity plans, allowing us to continue to deliver exceptional reliability and performance to our customers.

    Further information can be found in the FAQ below.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What’s the news?

    With the continued growth of Ex Libris cloud solutions for users worldwide, Ex Libris continues to enhance its global business continuity infrastructure.As part of its ongoing investment in strengthening data availability, and to support the growth of its Higher-Ed solutions customer base, Ex Libris has established a second data center in each of the following regions: the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific, in addition to the existing regional data centers. The second data center in each of the regions enhances our ability to continue to deliver exceptional reliability and performance to our customers. All three new data centers feature high-performance connectivity and energy efficiency and comply with world-class security standards, certified to ISO 27001, SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 standards.

    Where are the new data centers located?

    The new data centers have been established at geographic distance from existing data centers, aligning with business continuity best practice. Following is the location of each second data center:

    United States: Moses Lake, Washington; first data center is in Chicago, Illinois

    Europe: Frankfurt, Germany; first data center is in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Asia Pacific: Sydney, Australia (going live Q4 2019); first data center is in Singapore

    What is the reason for establishing second data centers in these regions?

    With the continuing growth of the Ex Libris Higher-Ed Platform and the number of customers globally, we have invested in our cloud infrastructure to accommodate this growth, allowing us to balance the growth and continue to provide a high level of performance and service. In addition, the opening of a second data center in each region allows us to enhance our business continuity options by having each site serve as the offsite data backup location for the existing data center in its region. The location of each new site was chosen while taking into account the geographic distance between the existing production environment data location and the offsite backup data location in order to be aligned with business continuity best practices.

    Will the location of my existing production or sandbox environments change as a result of the new data centers?

    No. Production and sandbox environments will remain in their current location and data center.

    Where will my offsite backup be stored?

    As stated above, each site will serve as the offsite data backup location for the other data center in its region.  As such, in the United States our Chicago and Moses Lake data centers will serve as the offsite backup storage site for each other. A similar relationship exists in Europe between the Amsterdam and Frankfurt data centers and in Asia Pacific between the Singapore and Sydney Australia data centers. The significant geographic distance between the sites within each region supports robust disaster recovery plans and is aligned with business continuity best practices. 

    I’m an Ex Libris customer. Is there anything I need to do?

    No customer action is required. The establishment of the new data centers and the new offsite backup arrangement is transparent to customers and does not impact the availability of Ex Libris solutions or customers’ data.

    Do I have the option to choose in which data center my production environment will be located? Can I switch my environment from my current data center to the new data center?

    Customers are assigned to a data center that matches their geographic region (for instance, European customers are hosted in one of the Ex Libris European data centers). The location of production environments is based on Ex Libris capacity management and planning processes. Ex Libris’ continued investment in its global cloud network, global cloud infrastructure, and SaaS services architecture helps provide users with a singular, consistent experience independent of the specific data center’s location.

    Does each of the new second data centers preserve Ex Libris’ security and high availability standards?

    Yes. All three new data centers feature high-performance connectivity and energy efficiency and comply with world-class security standards, certified to ISO 27001, SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 standards. Security will remain at these levels with no interruptions in data continuity practices, including backup retention, security controls and protection, security continuance monitoring, and full redundancy.

    Is Ex Libris using the same data center providers for the new data center in each region?

    As a business continuity best practice, we have opted to use different data center providers in Moses Lake (Cyxtera) and in Frankfurt (Digital Realty). We are using the same provider (Equinix) in Sydney as we have used in our Singapore data center. Like Equinix, both Digital Realty and Cyxtera are leading global data center providers; Digital Realty has over 200 data centers worldwide, Cyxtera has over 60 data centers, and Equinix has 200 data centers globally.

    Does Ex Libris have plans to add additional data centers in other countries?

    Currently there are no plans for additional regional data centers. We will keep customers updated when our future plans change.

    Will there be any negative impact on performance?

    No, there will be no impact on performance nor on time-to-backup with the new data centers. On the contrary, the establishment of a second data center in each of the regions will allow us to support growth while maintaining a high level of performance. The new data centers will maintain the Ex Libris data center procedures, methodology, and iterations and time-to-backup.

    How can I tell in which regional data center my environment is located?

    Ex Libris will be adding the ability to identify in which instance and data center the customer environment resides from within our SaaS services.

    Who should I contact for more questions?

    For further information, you are welcome to contact Ex Libris Support.

     

     

    Record of Changes

    Type of Information Document Data

    Document Title:

    Ex Libris Establishes New Second Data Centers in Three Regions

    Document Owner:

    Tomer Shemesh - Ex Libris Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).

    Approved by:

    Barak Rozenblat- VP Cloud Services

    Issued:

    May 14, 2019

    Reviewed & Revised:

    May 14, 2019

    Revision Control

    Version Number Nature of Change Date Approved

    1.0

    Initial version

    May 14, 2019

     

    Document Distribution and Review

    The document owner will distribute this document to all approvers when it is first created and as changes or updates are made. This document will be reviewed and updated annually or upon written request by an approver or stakeholder. Questions or feedback about this document can be directed to the owner or a listed approver

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