GAC Shipping in South Africa Opts for Redstor

Gulf Agency Company Ltd. (GAC Shipping) has migrated its backup and recovery requirements to Redstor Ltd to ensure its mission-critical information is always available and recoverable in the event of a disaster.

GAC Shipping is part of the GAC Group, a provider of integrated shipping, logistics and marine services. Established since 1956, the privately-owned group employs over 9,000 people in more than 300 offices worldwide.

Since it started business in 1998, it has been providing a range of ship agency services to vessels calling at all major ports in South Africa, as well as in neighbouring Namibia. It also offers a range of logistics services, including warehousing, throughout South Africa and beyond, reflecting the country’s status as a gateway to Africa.

GAC Shipping needed a DR and BC solution that would perform backups promptly to minimise the impact any potential disasters or downtime could have on the organisation.

“Given the nature of our business, GAC Shipping needs to have the peace of mind that it can access important information when we need it most. The new solution should also be able to scale as our operations expand and adapt to any other changing market requirements,” says Wanzenburg van Wyk, IT manager, GAC Shipping.

“Our experience with Cactus Backup, a Platinum Redstor Partner, has shown good results with the Redstor Backup Pro solution. We were advised on how quick and easy the restore process is, especially using the central console of Redstor,” says van Wyk. “With extensive SLAs in place with Redstor and Cactus Backup, we can now access our data within the time frames needed to ensure it is business as normal in the event of any downtime, which is vital given the global nature of the shipping industry.“

Currently, GAC Shipping is backing up multiple terabytes of data using the Redstor solution.

“GAC Shipping has several database and Web servers. Additionally, we have numerous desktops and laptops that also fall under the backup requirements. Fortunately, the Redstor monitoring tool enables to review the status of our backups and identify any potential problem areas. With Redstor, performing regular DR tests becomes a straightforward task as it is an efficient and user-friendly process. Redstor is always available, completely reliable, and a backup solution we can trust in,” van Wyk concludes.