VInet Technology Solutions builds data resilience for accounting practice with StorageCraft ShadowProtect.
One of VInet’s key customers is an award winning mid-tier accounting and business advisory firm, providing business and taxation advice from individuals right through to large businesses looking to expand.
As accounting firms store highly sensitive information such as financials and tax file numbers, security and privacy are top priorities. The client chose to work with VInet, an IT provider with a strong security focus and understanding of the accounting industry.
Historically, backups at the client’s site were stored on tape, which were removed to an offsite location manually on a daily basis. In addition to data security concerns, the process meant additional management overhead and led to lengthy backups, which would take overnight up to two to three days.
When a restore of even a single file was required, it was another timely and costly process.As the required tapes would sometimes be stored off site, there would be a delay in having the tape delivered to the restore being completed. With about 80 users at their branch requiring access to customer’s data on demand, an alternative solution was imperative.
As with most professional services, the accounting services industry is increasingly reliant on data on demand. Time-consuming backups are no longer acceptable as in accessible systems and data would cost significant downtime. We needed to bring in an IT provider like VInet who understands the accounting space and our need for solutions.
Business applications and customer data is crucial and requires 24/7 availability. Our partnership with StorageCraft has been essential in how we are able to help businesses like our client's to cut down cost as well as recovery time which in turn translates to valuable time in accessing data and servicing their clients, all while ensuring the integrity of their data protection and allowing them to meet their compliance requirements.
Following comprehensive research, VInet identified StorageCraft ShadowProtect SPX’s snapshot imaging technology as the ideal solution for the needs of the client.
“We needed something that could back up entire virtual machines, yet also have the ability to do granular restores of individual files. Another requirement was the move to faster backup storage and image level backups,” shared Stuart Davis, Managing Director, VInet Technology Solutions.
In deploying ShadowProtect SPX on all servers and StorageCraft Image Manager managing all the backup images, VInet is able to effectively maintain and manage backup image files and the storage space, offering continuous data protection. They are also able to replicate backups to an offsite repository, ensuring the firm is disaster-proof.
With the flexibility to create backups as frequently as every 15 minutes, VInet could ensure data loss is minimised along with resource usage and bandwidth required to transmit those incremental backups to an off-site location.
“With ShadowProtect, we were able to meet a number of key objectives for the client, most importantly well-protected data with almost no loss in productivity. Within minutes, we are able to recover files and folders, restore failed servers and instantly boot backup image into a virtual machine.” Stuart added.
The simplicity of ShadowProtect meant that the VInet team could deliver a truly disaster-resistant solution to the client, while being easy to manage and freeing up resources to focus on other aspects of more strategic IT needs.
The introduction of ShadowProtect by VInet has helped the client become more agile and efficient as a business. Their data and business applications are always readily available and the elimination of the previous manual backup process had led to overhead cost savings of around 42% in the past year.
From a recovery perspective, VInet is able to quickly address any need to restore files. Following a number of data corruption incidents recently, the VInet team were able to get the client back up and running from as little as thirty minutes.
Client spokesperson: “Our previous experience meant that when we needed to restore a file, we would have to keep our clients waiting, which was not ideal. Since working with VInet, the turnaround to clients has dropped significantly, from an average of one day to access data to a few minutes.”
“Security and the risk of cyber crime is paramount to us as a business as well as to our clients. We understand the value of having data resilience as a business and VInet provides us assurance that we will have access to our data in the event of a disaster. We want to impart the same rigor towards backup and recovery to our clients’ businesses as well.”
“Business applications and customer data is crucial and requires 24/7 availability. Our partnership with StorageCraft has been essential in how we are able to help businesses like the client to cut down cost as well as recovery time which in turn translates to valuable time in accessing data and servicing their clients, all while ensuring the integrity of their data protection and allowing them to meet their compliance requirements.” Stuart concluded.
VInet delivers more efficient,always-on data availability to clients with ShadowProtect SPX."
