Gabsten Announcing Cloud Backup and Recovery Managed Service

Data management consulting company Gabsten Technologies has announced the availability of their latest offering, a Backup and DR managed service in the South African market.

Many smaller companies struggle with the task of focusing on their core business while balancing other aspects of the business to ensure that risk is mitigated, especially when it comes to information management.

Given the importance of data in a digitally-driven business environment backup and DR is critical to BC and, until now, businesses were forced to utilise their own resources to purchase and oversee information management software internally. This makes backup and recovery functionality complex and costly in light of shrinking budgets and a local skills shortage, and in some cases, puts this functionality beyond the reach and affordability of smaller businesses.

“Our managed service now offers SMBs the opportunity to make use of a hosted software model with internationally recognised software. We’re offering a fully managed service to ensure our clients’ data is protected without the hassle or price tag of owning the infrastructure and software in-house,” explains Iniel Dreyer, MD, Gabsten.

This service has two possible service formats for businesses to choose from. The first lower-cost option includes office hours support from Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 17:00, with backups that run in the evening. The second is a 24/7 model which means that if disaster strikes, day or night, public holiday or not, the client will be able to recover their data.

Such a managed service means that the end-user will not need to keep the skills in-house to administer their backup environment as this will all be handled directly by the service provider.

“This managed service is in response to a growing need for smaller organisations to make use of backup and recovery services, where they do not have sufficient capital to invest in their own infrastructure and hire their own internal experts and resources. We’ve seen that businesses are reluctant to spend money on maintaining data protective measures in-house, as it’s difficult for them to see a return on this expenditure. Furthermore, data protection only becomes important to them once they’ve lost critical data, by which stage it’s too late,” Dreyer clarifies.

One of the biggest draw-cards in using a managed service is that the cost moves from a CAPEX to an OPEX discussion. This is made more attractive by the fact that businesses will not have to hire or train resources in-house nor will they need to manage them.

“All the business has to do is manage the SLA, which is flexible and can be tailored to each company’s specific needs,” Dreyer notes. “The true differentiator in this managed service lies in the flexibility of our service levels. We listen to what our customers need and we make it happen. We also insist on monthly on-site client meetings where we provide proactive feedback to clients about their environment and because it’s a local service, our clients can expect assistance from real people, on-site when they need it.“