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Oscar Mayer Copy Case Study - Advertorial

PowerWire Editor

13 May 2026 • 3 min read

From Risk to Resilience: How Oscar Mayer Strengthened IT Continuity with IBM HyperSwap and CopyAssure

Client: Oscar Mayer, leading UK chilled food manufacturer
Industry: Food Manufacturing
Technologies: IBM Flash Systems®, HyperSwap, Celerity CopyAssure
Partner: Celerity, IBM Platinum Partner

Oscar Mayer is a leading UK chilled food manufacturer, supplying major retailers and food service providers with products that carry a very short shelf life. In this environment, IT downtime carries immediate commercial consequences. A brief, unplanned outage can mean spoiled stock, missed delivery windows, and damaged relationships with the retail partners that depend on reliable, consistent supply.

The business had invested in replication and mirroring to protect against hardware failure, but a harder question remained unanswered: in the event of a cyberattack or ransomware incident, could they recover, how long would it take, and could they prove it? To address this, Oscar Mayer worked with Celerity to deploy IBM Flash Systems® with HyperSwap and CopyAssure.

The Problem

Oscar Mayer’s backup approach relied on nightly tape backups, with recovery tested just once a year. That left a significant gap. The business had no reliable, real-time visibility into whether any given backup would actually restore successfully, or within a timeframe their operations could absorb.

The problem is compounded in cyber recovery scenarios. Traditional disaster recovery solutions replicate data continuously, which means that ransomware or data corruption can propagate silently across mirrored systems long before anyone detects a problem. When the incident is finally identified, the most recent clean recovery point may be hours or days old, and its integrity is unknown. A solution that addressed both high availability and validated cyber recovery was needed.

The Solution

Celerity implemented an active-active storage configuration using two IBM Flash Systems interconnected via HyperSwap, with CopyAssure providing continuous recovery validation across Oscar Mayer’s IBM i environment.

HyperSwap handles high availability. Both storage systems actively manage workloads, and if one experiences a failure, the other takes over immediately with no disruption to production. The two systems are housed in separate physical locations, providing geographic redundancy as a baseline.

CopyAssure addresses cyber recovery. Every hour, it takes an immutable snapshot of Oscar Mayer’s IBM i systems and immediately validates that snapshot through a full restore in an isolated clean room environment. Validation runs across three tiers: system integrity checks, operating system health verification, and bespoke application tests tailored to Oscar Mayer’s specific environment. If a snapshot fails any check, the team is alerted straight away. Every validation result is captured in detailed recovery reports, providing the audit trail needed for compliance purposes.

The Results

The improvement was significant. Recovery Point Objective shifted from nightly backups to hourly snapshots, and Recovery Time Objective fell from hours to minutes. Where a single annual test had previously been the only evidence that recovery might work, CopyAssure now provides continuous validation, giving Oscar Mayer a proven recovery point for their business-critical systems at all times.

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“The implementation of IBM Flash Systems with HyperSwap and CopyAssure, delivered in partnership with the professional team at Celerity, has significantly strengthened our IT continuity. Their expertise and guidance were instrumental in deploying a solution tailored to the unique challenges of our industry. With near-zero downtime and rapid data recovery, we’ve been able to maintain seamless operations and continue delivering reliably to our retail partners, even in the face of unexpected disruptions. Most importantly, the resilience of this setup has given us real peace of mind, knowing our critical systems are protected and recovery is assured.” - Head of IT - Oscar Mayer

Why It Matters

For organisations running IBM Power systems in time-sensitive industries, the question following a cyberattack is rarely whether a backup exists. It is whether that backup will actually restore, and whether recovery can be completed within the window the business can afford. CopyAssure is designed to answer both questions, continuously and automatically, with documented evidence ready for audit.

Oscar Mayer now operates with a recovery posture that is both proven and current. Not an assumption built on last year’s test, but a position confirmed within the last hour. For a business where production runs continuously and shelf life is measured in days, that certainty is not a luxury. It is a requirement.

To find out more about CopyAssure and Celerity’s IBM Power services, visit www.celerity-uk.com or contact marketing@celerity-uk.com