How Did Generali US Branch Cut Disaster Recovery Time from Days to Hours — and Reduce Costs by 65%?

For an insurance company whose clients depend on fast service precisely when they have experienced a disaster, the ability to recover from a system failure in hours rather than days is not a performance metric — it is a business requirement. Generali U.S. Branch, which has provided insurance products and services since 1952, had been operating with a disaster recovery plan put in place after 9/11 that relied on nightly tape backups and a remote co-location facility. When that facility was sold and the limitations of the existing plan became impossible to ignore, Generali turned to eMazzanti Technologies. The result was a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution built on Microsoft Azure Site Recovery that eliminated three to five days of downtime, reduced disaster recovery costs by 60 to 65 percent, and gave the organization the confidence to pursue significant growth. "Generali is a more competitive organization from having met eMazzanti," said Mauricio Caneda, Senior Vice President and CIO. "Our investment in infrastructure and eMazzanti's reliable DRaaS solution will allow us to expand our organization and breadth of accounts."

What Disaster Recovery and Infrastructure Challenges Was Generali Facing?

Generali's technology challenges had accumulated over more than a decade since the post-9/11 disaster recovery plan was put in place. Three distinct problems had reached the point where action was unavoidable.

Slow recovery times: Generali's existing plan required nightly tape backups stored offsite, with restoration requiring physical tape transport to a Kansas City co-location facility. "We experienced three to five days of down time to bring up just part of the system," explained Caneda. For an insurance company serving clients who need rapid support after a loss event, that recovery window was fundamentally incompatible with the level of service Generali sought to provide.

Low confidence in the existing plan: Because it was impossible to conduct a complete test of the disaster recovery procedures, Caneda could not be certain they would work reliably when actually needed. The data carrier's infrastructure was located underground near the World Trade Center — in proximity to one of the world's largest active construction sites — adding a physical dimension to the recovery risk that compounded the confidence problem.

Cost and control vulnerabilities: When the Kansas City co-location facility was sold, Generali faced the prospect of acquiring another facility at comparable cost. They also needed to avoid a situation where their disaster recovery capability could be disrupted by factors outside their control. "We wanted to avoid having to buy the hardware and the problems with colocation," Caneda explained.

Generali also needed to address an aging productivity infrastructure. Their Exchange Server was located at the Kansas City facility, and the organization needed to decide between a local Exchange deployment and Office 365. As a Microsoft-committed organization, the choice was clear: "We are a Microsoft shop, and have had very good results. After researching the options, we decided to go with Office 365."

How Did eMazzanti Technologies Design a Solution Around Generali's Requirements?

In 2013, Generali was referred to eMazzanti Technologies through Microsoft when seeking an Office 365 implementation partner. Carl Mazzanti, CEO of eMazzanti, immediately focused the conversation on the value of a single-vendor, single-partner approach and the depth of eMazzanti's Microsoft expertise. eMazzanti visited Generali's offices and invited them to Hoboken, NJ to demonstrate what that partnership would look like in practice. "We decided to go with eMazzanti because of their responsiveness and their desire to work with us," said Caneda.

Over the following two years, eMazzanti's certified engineers worked through a staged infrastructure modernization. Office 365 replaced the aging Exchange infrastructure, followed by migration from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012 R2 and from VMware to Hyper-V. The Hyper-V migration resolved stability challenges that had been difficult to diagnose and correct under the VMware environment, simplifying ongoing operations in the process.

The disaster recovery component came into focus as the infrastructure stabilized. eMazzanti proposed a DRaaS solution based on Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (ASR) — a technology eMazzanti was positioned to deploy early through Microsoft's ASR Technology Adoption Program (TAP), which provided access to Microsoft engineering resources, support, and education for early adopters. "We are ahead of the curve with ASR deployment worldwide," Mazzanti noted. The solution continuously replicates Generali's entire environment to Azure at the block level — not nightly, but all day, every day, as changes occur. "We didn't want to risk any loss of data," Caneda explained.

What Results Has Generali Achieved Since Deploying eMazzanti's DRaaS Solution?

The measurable outcomes across recovery time, cost, and operational confidence are substantial.

Recovery time: The three-to-five-day recovery window has been eliminated. "We can bring up the entire operation and everything the employee needs in less than a day," said Caneda. "When our clients need us the most, we are ready to service them and help in any way that they need."

Cost reduction: "Our cost savings is in the range of 60-65%," Caneda reported — a direct result of replacing the co-location facility with Azure-based recovery infrastructure and eliminating the hardware acquisition, maintenance, and facility costs associated with the previous approach.

Testability and confidence: The previous plan could not be fully tested. The eMazzanti DRaaS solution makes testing not just possible but scheduled. "eMazzanti's DRaaS not only makes a test possible, it makes it a reality. We will do two tests per year." Generali can now conduct managed failover tests that confirm recovery will work reliably when actually needed — something the previous plan never allowed.

Operational simplification: Moving through the Azure TAP program eliminated the need to install Microsoft System Center. The Hyper-V migration resolved the VMware stability issues. The net effect was a more stable, more consistent environment requiring less ongoing attention and troubleshooting.

Growth enablement: "We're growing fast but are comfortable and confident that we can service clients in the way that we want to now," said Caneda. "That gives us peace of mind." With reliable infrastructure and disaster recovery in place, Generali has the operational foundation to pursue the account growth and organizational expansion that would have carried unacceptable risk under the previous setup.

Why Does the Single-Partner Approach Matter for Complex IT Infrastructure Projects?

The Generali case illustrates a pattern that recurs across complex enterprise IT engagements: the value of a technology partner who understands the full stack rather than optimizing individual components in isolation.

Generali's challenges were interconnected — aging productivity tools, an untestable disaster recovery plan, co-location dependency, and platform migration were all part of the same infrastructure situation. A partner focused on selling individual solutions might have addressed one or two of these; eMazzanti addressed all of them as a coordinated modernization program over two years. The Azure TAP program access — available because of eMazzanti's Microsoft relationship depth — provided capabilities and resources that would not have been available through a less committed Microsoft partner.

"Like our customers, we believe in continuity and communication. Working with eMazzanti and Microsoft allows us to do both well." For organizations managing complex IT environments where reliability is not optional, that kind of integrated, relationship-based partnership consistently produces outcomes that transactional vendor relationships do not.

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FAQ: Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Azure Site Recovery

Q: What is disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) and how does it differ from traditional backup?

A: Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) is a cloud-based approach in which a provider continuously replicates an organization's IT environment to a cloud infrastructure, enabling rapid failover and full system recovery in the event of a disaster or outage. Traditional backup solutions — such as nightly tape backups stored offsite — capture point-in-time copies of data but require manual restoration processes that can take days. DRaaS replicates changes continuously and supports managed failover to a running environment, typically reducing recovery time from days to hours or less. The key difference is recovery speed and confidence: DRaaS can be fully tested before a disaster occurs, while traditional backup plans often cannot.

Q: What is Microsoft Azure Site Recovery and why do organizations use it for disaster recovery?

A: Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is a cloud-based disaster recovery service that continuously replicates on-premises servers and workloads to Azure infrastructure. When a failure occurs, ASR enables failover to the replicated Azure environment, maintaining operations while the primary infrastructure is restored. Organizations use ASR because it eliminates the need for a secondary physical data center or co-location facility, reduces disaster recovery costs significantly compared to hardware-based alternatives, and supports regular testing of recovery procedures without affecting the production environment. As part of the Azure ecosystem, it integrates directly with Microsoft infrastructure and management tools.

Q: How much can DRaaS reduce disaster recovery costs compared to traditional co-location approaches?

A: Cost reductions from DRaaS implementations compared to traditional co-location approaches vary by organization, but reductions in the range of 50 to 70 percent are reported by organizations that have made the transition. The savings come from eliminating hardware acquisition and maintenance costs, removing co-location facility expenses, reducing IT staff time for manual backup and restoration processes, and avoiding the cost exposure of extended downtime. Cloud-based DRaaS also shifts disaster recovery costs from capital expenditure to predictable operational expenditure, improving budget reliability.

Q: What should an organization look for when evaluating a DRaaS provider?

A: Key evaluation criteria include the provider's recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) commitments — how quickly systems can be restored and how much data can be at risk. Organizations should verify that the provider supports regular testability of recovery procedures, since an untested disaster recovery plan provides false confidence. Microsoft partnership level and Azure expertise are particularly relevant for organizations already running Microsoft infrastructure. References from organizations in similar industries with comparable compliance and uptime requirements provide the most relevant performance indicators.

Q: How does migrating from VMware to Hyper-V affect disaster recovery capabilities?

A: Migrating from VMware to Hyper-V can improve disaster recovery capabilities for organizations using Microsoft-based infrastructure, because Hyper-V integrates directly with Azure Site Recovery without requiring additional translation layers or licensing for third-party virtualization management. The migration also eliminates potential stability and compatibility issues that arise at the interface between VMware and Microsoft tools, simplifying the overall architecture. For organizations already committed to the Microsoft ecosystem for productivity, security, and cloud services, aligning the virtualization layer with the same vendor reduces complexity and improves the reliability of integrated operations.