Johannesburg, 12 Mar 2009
As a company that has built its success on processing the information of third-parties, Alfinanz can't afford to take any chances when it comes to protecting data. For this reason, the company has selected the Attix5 Backup Professional solution, which not only automates daily backups, but also provides absolute assurance that all information is fully protected.
Alfinanz offers an innovative solution for financial services providers - the company describes itself as an 'offshore administration factory'. Its clients, which include financial advisors, intermediaries or brokers and some of the larger financial services organisations, outsource elements of processing. For example, these clients may retain new business acquisition and client servicing, but leave automated back-office functions such as debit order premium collections, to Alfinanz.
According to Pierre Esterhuizen, Head of IT Infrastructure at the company, all backups are crucial. “All our data is business critical. High availability for a restore at any point in time is a must,” he says.
In addition, operating in a highly regulated industry means the company is under a legal obligation to protect its information with the highest care.
Esterhuizen explains that prior to its deployment of Attix5, the company was using tape drives - not an uncommon approach to backups. Alfinanz experienced the difficulties, which are not uncommon to many companies using what is fast becoming an outmoded means of information protection. “Firstly, there is the administration required to send the tapes off-site. Secondly, a big issue is that you cannot always restore from tape, as tape drive heads move out of sync,” he explains.
Alfinanz's connectivity provider, Internet Solutions, introduced Attix5, relates Esterhuizen. “We ran a proof-of-concept for one month to see whether or not the solution was appropriate for our circumstances,” he says.
Petrus Human, Attix5 Technical Director, explains that Attix5 is an agent-based solution. “Software is installed on the machine to be protected; this agent analyses the data to be protected and securely transmits a highly compressed and encrypted file to our offsite data centre. As an automated solution, it gives companies like Alfinanz the assurance that their information is securely protected at all times,” he says.
Continuing, Esterhuizen says the main reason for considering the solution was the ability to restore without waiting for delivery of tapes. “The ability to 'pull' a restore from the Attix5 data centre means no delays and no hassle,” he says.
The test phase led to the realisation that Attix5 was completely reliable and suitable for the company's backup needs. “The backups always restore as it comes off disk and not tape. As a result, today we back up eight servers with the Attix5 solution. Our environment comprises three IBM AIX servers, two SQL servers, one Exchange server and two Windows 2003 file servers,” says Esterhuizen.
As a result of its relationship with Attix5, Esterhuizen says restore times and the ease of making backups have improved dramatically. “The off-site replication to the Attix5 storage platform enables us to have a disaster recovery and business continuity plan, which can be implemented faster,” he says. “We are in the process of negotiating a long-term archiving contract as the Life Assurer's Office requires monthly data to be stored for extended periods of time. In addition, we are negotiating a service agreement with Attix5 for support and monitoring, which will provide for a single contact to resolve all the issues we might encounter,” he says.
Alfinanz, says Esterhuizen, is confident it is getting best value and performance from its backup environment. “We were looking at alternatives to Attix5 to ensure we have the best solution at the best price. What we found was that the comparatives were either too costly, or did not have the same benefits as Attix5. As a result, I do not see Alfinanz changing its backup strategy in the near future; the Attix5 solution is comprehensive and adequately meets our requirements.”
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