Rocket rolls out Redstor’s data backup for schools service

Rocket are an established IT support company focused on the areas of Portsmouth and Hampshire. They offer bespoke support packages to schools and businesses and their services include tech support, installation work, website design and creation as well as other general IT services.

The company is currently a business partner for the Local Authority and holds contracts with a mixture of infant and primary schools in Hampshire.

Challenges
As the level of technology used within schools has increased, the amount of data needing to be backed up has also risen. In addition, schools are increasingly required to hold data for lengthier periods of time for compliance purposes. However, with no clear guidelines outlining which data schools must protect and for how long they must retain it, the amount of data each individual school holds can vary greatly before even taking into account school size.

Prior to utilising online backup, Rocket were supporting physical backup solutions at each of the schools they were providing support to. This presented a number of challenges for the company as it was looking to grow by winning more contracts to provide support to schools.

The initial challenges revolved around physical tapes or hard drives and how they cannot effectively scale to cope with data growth. This limitation meant that hard drives, tapes and tape drives needed replacing on a regular basis in order to allow backups to succeed as data volumes grew. Using physical solutions also meant that technicians had to make frequent site visits to manage and monitor the devices; taking up valuable time.

Furthermore, there was a growing need from the schools themselves who were looking for a more reliable, speedy and automated solution that would be able to accommodate the expanding amount of data being stored whilst requiring no manual input from a member of staff.

Solution
Rocket first met with Redstor at the BETT Show in 2013 and began talking about Redstor’s data backup offering. The company had previously looked at online backup and had implemented another company’s online backup service but found that as well as being difficult to manage, it also failed often and didn’t provide clients with a reliable and robust service. After trialling Redstor’s Backup for Schools Service in one school, Rocket decided to roll out the service in all of its contracted schools.
Simon Price, Director at Rocket said: “Whilst Redstor was slightly more expensive than some alternatives we looked at, the value for money has been second to none and exactly what we and our clients were looking for.” He added, “the installation was very smooth and after the initial upload, the service has been efficient and effective.”

Redstor’s Backup for Schools Service is a fully automated, online backup and data recovery service which simplifies the management of backups for schools and significantly reduces the amount of time technicians need to spend on-site. The service also addresses the challenge of coping with data growth in the schools themselves as Redstor’s service can scale infinitely without any additional hardware or software requirements and also automates the process of protecting critical data.

Results
Following the smooth introduction of Redstor’s online backup for schools service, Rocket is now successfully backing up data in all contracted schools, a total of 1.6TB; ranging from 20GB-500GB in each school.

The most significant business benefit for Rocket has been the amount of time saved by remotely managing the service. As a result, the service removes the need for technicians to visit each site in person purely to support and monitor backups. Redstor’s Backup for Schools Service generates a daily report which immediately notifies each school and Rocket’s support team that the backup has been successful whereas in the past this was previously unavailable.

Simon Price said, “Previously when we used physical back up, it required a technician to spend at least half a day in each location managing and replacing tapes. Redstor’s alternative has been fantastic as it has kept site visits to a minimum; saving us both time and money. The service’s scalability has also meant we have been able to successfully accommodate our clients’ increasing data which has been a huge benefit to them. The daily alerts confirming the backup has taken place is very good, we trust the solution and this gives us extra peace of mind.”

Price concluded, “We see Redstor’s backup solution playing a significant part in our overall business growth. As a business, Rocket are currently looking to roll out this service to other customers beyond the education market. With Redstor by our side, we’re confident this will really take off.”