Johannesburg, 05 Nov 2009
One thing that vehicle giant McCarthy doesn't have to worry about is the safety of its data. That's because the company has chosen the Attix5 Backup Professional solution to safeguard all essential information - automatically and with minimal human intervention.
Internet Solutions and Attix5 took responsibility for the implementation of the solution at McCarthy's premises and backs up the motor company's data to its offsite servers.
McCarthy is a national company, which consists of 217 business units, representing a portfolio of more than 30 vehicle brands, and quality audio brand, Yamaha Music. According to Preeban Munian, ICT Operations Manager at McCarthy, the company required an efficient, affordable and easy to use solution to solve its data protection challenge.
“Prior to engaging with Internet Solutions, the backup regime lacked structure. In effect, this left the business at risk. The notebooks of executives contain valuable information, which, if lost through any cause, will have an impact on productivity and performance,” he says.
Munian says Attix5's Backup Professional solution looked ideal on paper. “As a fully automated technology, which quietly takes care of the backup, compresses the data and sends it securely over an Internet connection to offsite servers, Backup Professional looked like the answer to our needs,” he confirms. In a proof-of-concept (POC) exercise, Backup Professional was installed on the computers of top executives in McCarthy's Fleet Solutions division.
Michael Law, Attix5 managing director, explains how the solution works: “A software agent is installed on the user's computer; it analyses the data to be backed up and securely transmits a highly compressed and encrypted file to the offsite data centre. As an automated solution, it allows companies like McCarthy to get on with their core business without worrying about the inconvenience of manual backups,” he says.
Law adds that where the initial backup is too large to be efficiently transmitted via the Internet, an initial copy is made on-site and physically transported to the offsite data centre. “This limits bandwidth usage; once Backup Professional is operational, it applies an algorithm, which detects change in files at the bit-level and transmits only these changes. That makes it bandwidth-frugal.”
Internet Solutions General Manager of Hosting Solutions, Greg Montjoie, says the POC successfully demonstrated the suitability of the Attix5 solution. “That led to a phased approach to deploying Backup Professional across the many McCarthy entities. The first phase is protecting the data of key executives, while the second phase will see the server infrastructure equipped for automated backups.”
Montjoie adds that while an automated backup eases administration for the McCarthy ICT team, it is in the restore that the real value of any data protection solution is apparent. “It's no good making a backup if you can't restore the data; Backup Professional provides a very simple Web console from which restores take place. Even if executives are out of the country and suffer a data loss or notebook failure, they can access their backup over the Internet and restore it to an alternative machine,” he says.
As the individual in charge of ensuring that backups do take place and data is protected in the McCarthy group of companies, Munian says the Web-based reporting console gives rapid insight into the state of backups across the company. “In an instant, we can see if there are any problems and take action if necessary,” he explains. “However, the solution itself works smoothly in the background, ensuring that the data of our executives is safely stored and readily available should they need to access it.”
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