Freight forwarding company Manica Africa is, for compliance purposes, legally required to keep ten years’ worth of border and customs transaction records. But, as most of its branches are situated in bandwidth-constrained rural and remote areas such as border posts, it is vital that the company make use of up-to-date, failsafe backup and recovery storage solutions. Altonet recommended Manica Africa use the HP LiveVault from HP Autonomy in order to address their specific challenges. This solution was further implemented in seven of their branches throughout South Africa.
Dennis Battiscombe, IT Manager of Manica Africa South Africa says, “Having an available and accessible backup of our data is critical, not only for compliance purposes but also for risk management. For example, in the event of a dispute, if we cannot prove that a customs transaction took place, we are held liable for outstanding amounts with the South African Revenue Service (SARS) – and this could add up to hundreds of thousands of Rands.
Our original backup solution was not centralised, with each branch conducting its own tape-based backup. This was inefficient and unreliable due to backups not run timeously and backups not completed. We therefore decided to centralise our solution, but inadequate bandwidth at many outlying areas proved to be a real limiting factor. Attempting to complete continuous backups to the Cloud in these areas was causing backups to fail, which meant that we were left vulnerable to the consequences of data loss.’
In order to deliver up-to-date and reliable backup and recovery, LiveVault is able to combine disk-and cloud-based technologies, regardless of any bandwidth constrictions.
Gareth Tudor, CEO of Altonet explains, “The HP LiveVault solution makes use of a Turbo Restore Appliance (TRA), which conducts continuous backup every 15 minutes on the Local Area Network (LAN). This is then sent to our centralised vault in Teraco’s data centre in Isando. Since we are only sending these backups via the cloud once a day on a predetermined schedule – usually at night – even Manica’s remote sites could be assured of the highest levels of reliability with regard to their backup and recovery. Furthermore, Altonet’s vaults are duplicated in another data centre, providing Manica with complete security of their backup.’
Battiscombe concludes, “The team from Altonet were fantastic, delivering the solution on time and providing support whenever and wherever necessary.’
Visit the Altonet website for more information.
