Howden Thomassen Compressors

Howden Thomassen Compressors

Howden Thomassen Compressors is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of compressors. They design, produce, repair and maintain all types of compressors worldwide. In early 2010 Thomassen was looking for a backup-over-IP solution, as it faced the drawbacks of using traditional tape backup solutions. The data volume was too big and the backup window was not big enough. IASO proposed the desired 2-tier backup solution that would fit such a large, international company with lots of data, short backup windows and complex data structures.

In February 2010 Thomassen started with five servers and 1 workstation. The backup process was organized for 1 international location and various smaller locations in the Netherlands. In this initial phase they were quite hesitant about the performance of IASO Backup software. How could relatively simple software efficiently handle the entire backup process? Was the backup complete and consistent? And why did several processes take initially a bit longer?

From the moment they got deeper insight into the software and could see the real-time changes in the backup, their trust began to grow. IASO provided them with high quality support: mutual problem-solving on a regular basis, dedicated consultancy and a lot of attention, spent on the process of setting up.

At the end of 2010, they launched an in-house, company-wide backup solution, based on the IASO backup-over-IP technology. With an annual license, 20 servers are now involved in the backup process, with a initial combined storage capacity of 10TB. From all international locations the first backup is made in Rheden. After that, the data is then synchronized to a backup server. For quick recoveries, they appeal to the local backup, but for a disaster recovery, off-site backup is available.

At the end of 2011 Thomassen decided to review the IASO Backup licence for their expanding business. Chris van Ravenswaay, IT manager; along with data growth, virtualisation and the growing worldwide agencies it was very useful to use the new “unlimited” licencing. We can use unlimited clients, both server and workstation. The only thing we pay for is the amount of used backup storage (25TB). It doesn’t matter whether it’s Exchange, SharePoint, SQL or VMware. Currently we are replicating our storage server to a secondary location, but our co-locations (Brazil, Australia, India, Russia Dubai, Singapore + smaller agencies) are also using the LocalSpeedVault technology to ensure business continuity, even without a internet connection.

TNS NIPO

TNS NIPO

TNS NIPO is a part of the TNS Group, one of the world’s largest suppliers of market research. The capacity limit of the original tape backup solution was quickly reached because the full daily backup size was 1 TB, and TNS NIPO was reoriented to find other alternatives for backup. The alternative was also needed to solve the problem of a too narrow backup window.

The search appeared to be beneficial for IASO. According to Edwin Been, IT Manager at TNS NIPO, IASO, as a specialist in IP backup, was the only party that really suited the action to the word. In practice the test showed the same results as they were promised to be according to the documentation. This was not the only reason for TNS NIPO to choose IASO. Particularly, the fact that IASO backup software is a relatively simple and easy solution was also a weighty argument. “Why should it be unnecessarily complicated, if it can be so easily?” is Edwin’s philosophy that he adheres to. The fact that IASO is making use of standard solutions is a nice add-on. It has made complicated adjustments unnecessary.

TNS NIPO has data centers at two locations. It is advantageous for the data security as the backed up data is physically stored remotely at another location. Moreover, they are owned by TNS NIPO, so there is always direct access to the backed up data, without any external party interaction. By using a private network the data is well protected from the outside world, while it can be always accessed. Thus the circuit is complete.

IASO Backup solution is based on an Annual License agreement, a contract that perfectly suits the companies that want to manage the backup process in-house without major investments upfront. The maintenance and support are included in the annual license fee.

Edwin Bone is a happy manager. He doesn’t have to decide whether it’s time to clear the disk space for new data in order to replace the rarely used data. With IASO Backup Enterprise Edition the daily backup can be performed quickly and with almost no effort.

Syntens

Syntens

Syntens, an independent consulting firm that works for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and other authorities, was looking for a fully automated online backup solution that could be offered to the customers. Syntens was already familiar with IASO and chose our company as we could provide just the right backup solution. The challenge was to create a solution that would put an end to the data loss of the 450 laptop users. And that could be centrally managed by the IT department, in order to remove the problem of performing daily backup for other employees.

Due to the selection of IASO IP Backup as a backup solution, little or no data would be lost in case of emergency. Now it is possible to schedule the backup for the laptops to be performed at any time of the day. For starting a backup process only Internet connection is needed, thus the backup can be performed without interfering with users’ daily work.

The head of Syntens IT Department, Ad Stekelenburg, considers the cooperation achievements amazing. “Now the servers are also connected and we do not have to use tape backup any longer, many problems are solved. It should be realized that Syntens does not have IT people in the offices, so sometimes you have to ask a secretary to change the tape daily. But she is not always present, so it is easy to forget about the tape or there is tucked in a cleaning tape”.