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Cenlar is Migrating to the Cloud

October 1, 2019

The purpose of this advisory is to let you know that Cenlar is moving data center infrastructure services to the Cloud. We have selected Microsoft Azure, the largest Cloud provider in the world, as our hosting partner. Clearly, the Cloud has advantages for Cenlar, and in turn, our clients. The chief benefit for you is that the Cloud allows us to squarely focus on the business of servicing.

During the next several months, Cenlar will be working with a Microsoft-certified partner to support the Cloud migration. The move will include a rigorous testing process to ensure there is no impact to you or your members. We will provide periodic updates as the project progresses.

A Phased-Approach
Cenlar has structured the Cloud implementation in phases to allow for refinement throughout. The first phase is focused on moving our Disaster Recovery capability and the infrastructure hosted in Cenlar’s secondary data center that is currently situated at a Sungard co-location facility. We anticipate making substantial progress in this effort by the end of the year.

More about Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
As a component of Cenlar’s migration to the Cloud, a number of improvements in Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) responsiveness and capabilities are planned. Cenlar expects to achieve both capacity-on-demand and additional maturity around the availability of critical systems and data.

Cenlar’s BC/DR program includes the testing of different systems capabilities throughout the calendar year, culminating in the annual BC/DR exercise, which is typically conducted in Q’4 and shared with our clients each year. As a result of the Cloud migration project, Cenlar does intend to restructure the approach to the annual BC/DR exercise. We will conduct incremental cloud DR migration testing into Q’1 2020. Cenlar will implement a fully representative Disaster Recovery exercise by spring of next year.

Reporting on Our Progress
Cenlar will prepare testing summary documentation to share with our clients in 2019 that incorporates all BC/DR testing efforts that have been performed thus far along with reporting on DR migration status as the project progresses through year-end.

Please share this information with the appropriate contacts in your IT department.