Asigra Saves Data-Dependent Small Business From Disaster

August 29, 2007; 12:59 AM

Asigra today announced that its online backup and recovery software has saved a small business from the brink of disaster. Just two weeks ago, website and e-book business Art of Performance experienced complete data loss when a local power outage occurred at the moment the server was shutting down for the night, which caused the desktop PC to break down. The system administrator initially contacted the computer manufacturer, which gave an estimate of one week for a new system to be uploaded but could offer no remedy for recovering the lost data. However, with the Asigra-based backup software already in place as part of the overall IT support service from Falcon IT, Art of Performance had a new PC installed and was able to access all of its lost data within eight hours of the power outage.

Before Falcon IT installed Asigra’s Televaulting software at Art of Performance five months ago, using the services of Smartways, only the critical data was occasionally being backed up manually using easily corruptible rewritable CDs, which would have offered little protection in the event of a system breakdown such as this. Switching to the reliable and cost-effective disk-to-disk online backup and recovery software that carries out a full backup of all of the data to an offsite location every day proved to be crucial for the survival of a company whose data is the lifeblood of its business.

Commenting on Smartways’ TouchPoint online backup and recovery service, deployed by Falcon IT, Roy Palmer, director of Art of Performance’s website services, said: “The monthly fee for the backup is negligible for the business return — the security of our valuable marketing collateral, e-zines, invoices, and video files is reliably ensured now that we have the backup and restore technology in place.”

The unique agentless structure of the Asigra software provides Smartways and Falcon IT with a simple pay-as-you-go licensing system, so that they only pay for the accumulative amount of compressed data their customers need to back up and vault offsite. This allows the service providers to tailor their billing scales for customers depending on the capacity of data storage required, regardless of how many users there are and without any hardware or software license costs.

“Because only one piece of software running on one device across the network at any given site is needed to protect an entire organization’s data, service providers like Smartways and Falcon IT can be flexible in rescuing any size and type of business from disaster, from SOHO businesses to giant enterprises — they only pay for the amount of data they need to protect,” said Eran Farajun, executive vice president of Asigra. “I am delighted that Asigra service providers such as Smartways and Falcon IT can save even the smallest of businesses with our corporate-class software.”

About Art of Performance
The Art of Performance chain of websites provides visitors with expert advice and guidance from fitness coach Roy Palmer, MSTAT NDT(INPP) using the acclaimed Alexander Technique. The content focus goes further than personal fitness, however, with a free guide on how to earn extra income from a worldwide market through e-commerce. For more information, visit www.fitness-programs-for-life.com.

About Falcon IT
Falcon IT was set up to provide small and medium-sized businesses with enterprise-class IT service at a cost-effective rate. The agentless backup and recovery software by Asigra is the technology that Falcon IT uses to facilitate this comprehensive solution. For more information, visit www.falcon-it.co.uk.

About Smartways
Smartways is a supplier of IT solutions and services that help facilitate information exchange within and between the world’s leading companies and their customers. Smartways’ mission is to become the preferred supplier of online backup and data recovery services to the UK IT reseller channel by December 2007. The company was incorporated in the United Kingdom in February 1994 as a private limited company. For more information, please go to www.smartways.net or www.touchpointbackup.co.uk, or call Smartways at +44 (0) 1604 670500.

About Asigra
Asigra is the award-winning leader in remote office/branch office (ROBO) online backup and recovery for enterprises and managed backup service providers. The company’s flagship product, Televaulting, is used by global enterprises in the financial, insurance, legal, government, healthcare, and retail industries with more than four petabytes of data protected. Asigra technology is used by hundreds of service providers worldwide that offer managed backup services to companies ranging from small and medium businesses (SMBs) to Global 2000 enterprises. The agentless remote site backup and recovery solution provides simple, centralized management of the data protection process while eliminating the capital and operational expenses associated with agent-based solutions. Founded in 1986, Asigra is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with partner offices around the world.

For more information, visit www.asigra.com.

Asigra, the Asigra logo, BLM and Televaulting are trademarks of Asigra Inc. All other brand and product names are, or may be, trademarks of their respective owners.