PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has decided to throw its reputation behind a Stellenbosh-based company with a backup solution that has already been recognised by M-Web and Internet Solutions.
Financial services group PwC has acquired a minority interest in Attix5, a Stellenbosch-based company that has developed a product for automated and secure backup.
Ian van Reenen, chief technical officer at Attix5, says the company`s product, Backup5, is ideally suited to companies with a mobile workforce and aims to eliminate the problems of remote backup.
Backup5 is written in Java, making it portable to most platforms, and uses TCP/IP to backup data over networks. Van Reenen says Backup5 automatically senses when users join the network, either through the LAN or by dial-up, and backups the required data. The system`s administrator can control the scheduling of backups.
Van Reneen says Backup5 encrypts all data using 448-bit encryption before backing it up to a raid 5 server. Backup5 only backs-up specified file and file types.
He adds that Backup5 has built-in version control and will only backup altered files. To limit bandwidth congestion, Backup5 detects alterations in documents at a binary level and only backs-up the "patch" for each change. Restoring data involves retrieving the document and applying the relevant patches up to the required date. Backup5 administrators can specify limits to this process and require a full upload at pre-set intervals.
"PwC has been testing and checking Backup5 with a view to implementing it within our own organisation, both locally and internationally," says Colin Beggs, CEO of PwC. "We also believe that commercial business will welcome the additional security provided by the product."
Roelou Barry, CEO of Attix5, says recent reports suggest that more than 50% of critical business data is generated on remote or mobile devices and is not usually catered for by existing backup solutions.
Barry says Backup5`s automatic backup system solves this problem. Users of Backup5 are able to access their backed-up data through a Web-interface from anywhere that has an Internet connection.
Apart from the relationship with PwC, Attix5 has partnered with both M-Web and Internet Solutions. Van Reenen says Backup5 is being distributed by Internet service provider M-Web to its dial-up clients as "My Backups".
He notes that Attix5 is also suitable for the corporate environment, and clients can either host the backup servers themselves or purchase space on the hosted servers at Internet Solutions.
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