Art of Performance saved from total data loss

Just two weeks ago, website and e-book business Art of Performance experienced complete data loss when a local power cut occurred at the moment its server was shutting down for the night. That caused the desktop PC to break down. The system administrator initially contacted the computer manufacturer, which gave an estimate of one week for a new system to be uploaded, but could offer no remedy in view of the lost data. However, with Asigra-based backup software already in place as part of its IT support service from Falcon IT, Art of Performance had a new PC installed and was accessing all its ‘lost’ data within eight hours. Before Falcon IT installed Asigra’s tele-vaulting software five months ago, using the services of Smartways, only the critical data was occasionally being backed up – manually and using easily corruptible rewritable CDs that would have offered little protection. Switching to disk-to-disk online backup and recovery software that carries out a full backup every day of all data to an offsite location, proved crucial for the survival of a company whose data is the lifeblood of its business. Roy Palmer, director of Art of Performance Website Services, says: “The monthly fee for the backup is negligible for the business return. The security of our marketing collateral, e-zines, invoices and video files is reliably ensured now that we have the backup and restore technology in place.” The agentless structure of the Asigra software provides Smartways and Falcon IT with a pay-as-you-go licensing system, so that they only pay for the amount of compressed data their customers need to back up and vault offsite. This allows the service providers to tailor their billing scales for customers depending on the capacity of data storage required, regardless of how many users there are and without any hardware or software license costs.