Case studies

This page is dedicated to providing you with examples of the different ways we are working with customers to deliver the Arkivum Service,. This page will be continually updated so do please keep checking back.

1. RGB (Rawle, Gammon and Baker), one of the biggest family run builders’ merchant in the South West, uses Arkivum A-Stor to archive old accounts and reduce pressure on backup tapes by 80%.

Background

Established in 1850, RGB is one of the oldest builders’ merchants in the country. It is a leading independent family-owned builders’ merchant in the South West employing more than 200 staff, with branches across Devon and Cornwall.

Problem

With separate accounts for 14 stores as well as its head office - some of which dated back to the early 2000s - RGB was loading a large amount of data on to its backup tapes each night. “I estimate that about 80% of the information we were putting on to the tapes had not been looked at for several years,” says Jeremy Webb, IT manager at RGB. This meant that in the event of a systems failure, RGB would have spent many hours re-loading non-current information back on to its network, just so that it could access business critical data.

“We needed a secure off-site facility where we could store archive material – anything that we do not need to access on a regular basis,” continues Jeremy. “We wanted to focus on data that was not likely to change, that we could exclude from our daily backups.”

Solution

To resolve this issue, RGB turned to Arkivum’s A-Stor solution to archive its invoices and other vital documents. A-Stor is a highly cost-effective service, which utilises industry-leading LTO/LTFS data tape technology and open standards to deliver fast and efficient online access. The archive is delivered as a single file system on the customer’s network enabling the quick and simple search and retrieval of data.

Arkivum provides cost effective, long-term storage, with a 100% guarantee of data integrity. Its A-Stor solution is ideal for the construction industry as it can guarantee that all vital documents, such as invoices, plans, quotes, tax and insurance documents will be safe and secure, yet quick and simple for the customer to access.

“We liked Arkivum’s concept,” says Jeremy. “We did not see anything else on the market that compared to it in the same price bracket. One of the main attractions was the functionality of having a list of directories at our end that reflected what was stored in the data centres.”

RGB has opted to have its files moved to Arkivum’s data centres overnight as this reduces pressure on the builders’ merchant’s bandwidth during the day. It has capacity to store up to 2TB of data and plans to roll out the solution to other areas of the business.

Results

“Arkivum has helped us to create a robust archiving solution that will allow us to focus our budget on the business rather than more storage,” says Jeremy. “We need easy-to-manage, secure, off-site storage and archive facilities at a reasonable cost. Only Arkivum can provide the guarantees, security and level of service necessary to keep our data safe and allow us easy access.

“Arkivum’s key strength has been the guarantee of data security and the ease with which the service integrated into our Windows environment. This has enabled our users to access a key new service of unlimited storage, with minimal training.”  

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