For things to work effectively we have a procedure in place for our partners to follow. The highlights are:

• Inform us beforehand, so we can pre-warn the security staff (all unexpected deliveries are refused at the door) and have staff waiting to do the import as soon as it comes in.
• USB or NAS only please! We don’t support FireWire or eSATA disks.
• Format the disk as FAT32 and not NTFS. We run Linux on the vault, and NTFS only works on Windows. XP’s format tool will only format partitions up to 32GB, so you may need to use Ridgecorp’s free fat32format tool to format a larger disk. You can download it here.
• Bubble-wrap is your friend. Hard disks are fragile and do get damaged in the post unless well padded. We’ve had several cases where the disk has arrived in bits.

Drop us a line and we’ll e-mail you the full procedure document.

How To Get Here
The building is just off the Merrion Road, near the RDS. The nearest DART stop is Sandymount, and the 4, 4a, 5, 7, 7a, 8 & 45 bus routes all stop close by. Please see below for the location and driving directions. There is plentiful on-street parking available on Beatty’s Avenue and Herbert Cottages.

View Larger Map
Once you get there take the lift to the 1st floor and follow the signs to the Regus reception desk to sign in.

Agenda
During the 3 hour training session we’ll be covering

• Installation & configuration
• Common issues
• Suport escalations
• Account management using the web portal
• Initial backup and DR processes

The morning session starts at 9am, and the afternoon one starts at 1:45pm.

VSS is supported for Windows XP SP1, Windows 2003 & Windows Vista systems. To enable it in exisiting backup sets, edit the backup set, select “Advanced Options” and check the “Backup through volume shadow copies” box.

Dublin, Ireland, 8th September 2008. Irish online backup services company Central Databank has partnered with the ISV (Independent Software Vendor) Shortcuts Software, expanding the company’s services to over 10,000 customers across the globe. On full deployment, the partnership will bring global gross revenues for Central Databank to over €1m.

Shortcuts head office is based in Brisbane, Australia with two further offices located in Sale, Cheshire (UK) and Long Beach, California (USA) respectively. Shortcuts is the world’s leading provider of business management software solutions to hair and beauty salons and spas across the globe, currently operating in over 10,000 sites.

Irish company Central Databank (CDB) is a specialist online backup service provider offering services exclusively through IT reseller and ISV channel partners. CDB in conjunction with Shortcuts will establish additional data sites in Mainland Europe, Australia and North America.

“CDB provides a number of service offers in the back up sector to include mobile back up, enterprise back up and data replication services. We enable IT providers to become active, providing all the infrastructure, training and support needed. The CDB Sales Partner gets into the back up service provision business overnight without the necessary capital expenditure required. They in turn sell the back up to their clients,” says Dermot Mooney, CEO of CDB.

Online backup provides customers with robust effective off-site storage and back up of all their critical business data. CDB’s service is totally automatic and monitored 24/7 by specialist staff. CDB has built a unique service position.

“Our utility model is very different to any model in the market to date. It is harder to execute. We provide Sales Partner with all the infrastructure to enable them to deliver a top class service to their customer for critical data on their network on their laptop and even on their smart phone and PDAs,” adds Mooney.

“Our motto is global service for local delivery. This particular partnership has allowed us to reach customers spread over three continents, even though CDB are an Irish-based company. This deployment along with others planned will allow CDB accelerate multi regional sites while managed from Dublin. That is what makes it unique,” commented Mike Sowden, Chief Executive Officer of Shortcuts Software (UK) Ltd.

“The online back-up solution, supplied by CDB, for our clients is just part of our on-going commitment to providing the best in class software and service to the hair and beauty industry. This seamless solution provides our clients with additional security and assurance, that helps secure all their business data. And with which helps set Shortcuts apart from competing solutions.”

Ends

About Central Databank

Central Databank was formed in 2001 as Europe’s first specialist trade only online off-site back up service provider. CDB provides its clients with own-brand software, training, mentoring and a managed back-end enabling a painless entry into the online backup market. CDB’s platforms are highly secure, offering up to AES 256 encryption and highly robust, providing 99.99% availability. Our solutions are priced according to capacity usage, so there are no maintenance, per-seat, per-feature or any other hidden costs.

Working through over 40 Partners and trade verticals CDB has deployed service offers for server, desktop, laptop, mobile phone and PDA backup. CDB currently supports over 1,500 customers on service under the management of the core technical team in Ireland.

For further information please contact:

Central Databank,
Alexandra House,
The Sweepstakes,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4
Tel: +353-1-664 1419;
peter.fogarty@centraldatabank.com
Website: www.centraldatabank.com

About Shortcuts

Shortcuts Software (UK) Limited is the European office of Shortcuts Software. Shortcuts specialise in business management solutions for salons and spas. There are over 11,000 salons and spas using Shortcuts in over 40 countries, in 9 languages worldwide. Shortcuts has three main offices, these are based in the UK, Australia and the USA.

Asigra Televaulting 8.0 introduces a grid configuration for Windows clients. This allows you to have a master system and one or more slave systems with the processing load dynamically distributed evenly across the systems. Fault tolerance is also improved because any system can fail and the grid will stay operational. If the master system fails, one of the slave systems will automatically take it’s place and the backups will keep on running. This is a free feature for all customers.

• Industry’s most advanced virtual server backup
  First to support VMware ESXi and all popular virtual server platforms
  Eliminates requirements for custom VCB script development
  Agent-free for non-intrusive performance, interoperability, low-touch management and more
  Any-to-any restore capability
  Bare metal recovery
  Automated mass deployment
• Intelligent archiving
  Policy-based backup lifecycle management
  Long-term de-duplicated data retention up to 21 years
  Storage hardware cost reduction
• Multi-directional data center replication
  Replacement of storage-storage replication
  One-to-one, many-to-one or many-to-many replication
• Enterprise application-aware support
  SAP, SharePoint, Oracle, MS-SQL, DB2, MS-Exchange, Lotus Notes, GroupWise and more
• DS-Client grid-based scalability
  Enables seamless capacity and performance growth
  Unmatched reliability through robust architecture

The final phase of the process will happen next Thursday morning (14th August). DS-Clients will automatically start downloading and installing the client upgrade once they connect to the vault for the first time after we upgrade the vault. This may mean Thursday night’s backup will be skipped, so you should run a manual backup on Friday morning.

Speaking at the launch of their new product offering, Howard Beggs, CEO of Helix Health and Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist said, “Given the sensitivity of health related records, we at Helix Health understand that data protection is of particular importance to health care professionals.  Over the years we have had incidents where customers, with the best of intentions while using traditional back up methods, have lost significant data through disasters such as fire or IT failures. We are confident that together with a leading technology innovator such as CDB we can offer Healthcare professionals a value added service and peace of mind.”

Central Databank’s primary storage service centre is based in Dublin with full monitoring and reporting offered 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The service will enable users to protect their patient data including any scans, results and images in an offsite location without having to run lengthy daily backups and worry about holding multiple tapes or other backup media in another location.

Dermot Mooney, CEO of Central Databank believes that there is an onus on Medical Practitioners to protect their data.  “In light of recent data security breaches in professional sectors leaving customers exposed to identity fraud and given the strong ethical obligations imposed on health professionals in relation to their patients, it is vital that practitioners in this sector take the utmost measures to ensure that their data is both secure and protected”
Central Databank and Helix Health aim to ensure consistent protection and availability of crucial patient records by facilitating rapid recovery from an emergency, such as computer failure, virus infection, flood or fire which could result in the destruction of the original data.

About Helix Health

Helix Health is a leading provider of world-class healthcare software and IT solutions. The company was formed in 2007 as a result of a merger between Systems Solutions (leading provider of pharmacy management software) and Medicom (market leader in general practice systems), creating the largest indigenous healthcare IT provider in Ireland. With a combined customer base of over 10,000 users of its healthcare software offerings, the company provides innovative technology solutions to Primary Care, Pharmacy, Specialist Health Care and Private Consultants, Health Assessment and Government. Helix has annual revenues of over €11m and employs almost 100 staff in Ireland. Helix Health has built a strong reputation for delivering quality software, which combines flexibility and user-friendliness. Helix Health is future-focused, quality-focused and customer-focused enabling healthcare professionals to deliver superior health services to their patients.

About Central Data Bank

Central Databank was formed in 2001 as Europe’s first specialist trade only online off-site back up service provider. CDB provides its clients with own-brand software, training, mentoring and a managed back-end enabling a painless entry into the online backup market. CDB’s platforms are highly secure, offering up to AES 256 encryption and highly robust, providing 99.99% availability. Our solutions are priced according to capacity usage, so there are no maintenance, per-seat, per-feature or any other hidden costs.

Working through over 40 Partners and trade verticals CDB has deployed service offers for server, desktop, laptop, mobile phone and PDA backup. CDB currently supports over 1,500 customers on service under the management of the core technical team in Ireland.

Data deduplication, just in the past year, has become a potentially money-saving technology that shouldn’t be ignored, a Forrester Research Inc. analyst says.

By eliminating a company’s redundant data — with the amount varying by company — deduplication tools are for the first time offering a chance for IT departments to work primarily with disk-based backup, cutting down on affordable but cumbersome magnetic tape storage…..

read more

Managed Backup Providers make it possible for companies to safely bring backup software into existing corporate production environments. Select backup software that reduces backed up data footprints by ratios of 10:1 or greater before encrypting and sending the data to the MSPs site for long-term protection. These high data reduction ratios contribute to the efficient transmission of data over WAN links and data storage at the Managed Backup Provider’s site while the use of agentless backup software minimizes implementation and installation times at client sites.

Yet the feature that most often appeals to companies is that they can outsource the responsibility for their backup process to an MSP whose expertise is backup and recovery. These types of benefits are resulting in the emergence of MSPs who offer backup services that satisfy the needs for three distinct classes of companies and are quite different from each other.

Companies offering managed typically focus on one of three areas:

• Consumer and Small and Home Office (SOHO) - Cost is a key factor for these backup Storage Service Providers (SSPs). Backup is the focus versus recovery and is generally done from a single client site that experiences no more than 15 GB of changes to its data daily. The primary downside is that data recovery may take days.
• Small to Midsize Business (SMB ) - These MSPs are focused on recovery of information and provide more complex and expansive infrastructures to support this focus. They can support data volumes of up to 3 TB of changed data daily and multiple operating system platforms.  Recovery times are typically in the range of 24 to 72 hours.
• Small to Large Enterprise - Offered by fewer MSPs, enterprise-class business continuity services are recognized by their emphasis on providing fast recovery in the event of a disaster – less than 24 hours. Daily enterprise customer data volumes can far exceed 3 TB and the MSP must support a variety of operating system platforms and offer multiple recovery options. Application recoveries need to occur in less than 24 hours and the MSP may need to support the failover and recoveries of specific customer applications at their site.

The availability of multiple MSPs for each customer class is resulting in differentiators that extend beyond how MSPs protect and recover corporate data to what other services they offer and even how – and from whom – users can buy an MSP’s core backup service. The MSP’s choice and implementation of backup software, data center infrastructure and recovery options are key features that companies should examine to ensure the MSP meets their requirements. Delivering on corporate recovery point and time objectives, supporting different corporate data retention periods and managing fluctuations in daily corporate data change rates are key variables that companies should include as part of their decision making process.

Evaluating MSPs
MSPs that offer backup services generally self-classify themselves according to one of these three categories – SOHO, SMB or enterprise – so determining which class an MSP falls into is generally as simple as asking the MSP or reviewing its web site or product literature. To make an informed decision as to which MSP a company should select is based on other criteria not so immediately evident.

One criterion that companies should evaluate is each MSPs potential for handling future growth. MSPs may differ significantly in the total number of physical sites that it manages, how much total data it manages and how it grows and manages its infrastructure as the total amount of data it receives from its clients fluctuates and grows.

Some MSPs discovery that they can help lower their client’s backup costs by first archiving infrequently accessed customer data to lower cost tiers of storage prior to actually implementing its backup service since they will need to store less of the client’s backed up data on expensive primary storage systems. Some managed backup service software platforms offer this capability and others do not so in the Managed Backup Provider selection process, it is critical for the buyer to discover ‘what’s inside’ in terms of the technology platform they are using and how the benefits of that technology are delivered to the managed backup user.

How MSPs monitor and respond to hourly, daily or weekly changes in corporate data volumes as well as corporate data volume growth is another differentiator. Fluctuations and growth in corporate data traffic and storage may impact how quickly data is backed up and recovered. J.A.M. Distributing’s MIS Director, Scott Restivo receives daily reports from his MSP, and can now quickly quantify how long backups take. Using his previous backup software, he never really knew how long or what data he was backing up but now, says Restivo, “I know to the GB how much data I nightly back up.”
Finally, MSPs should be able to explain how they account for peak periods or sudden spikes in network traffic and how quickly they can grow their storage capacity over time, though one should only expect these reports from MSPs targeting SMBs and enterprise customers. MSPs can produce reports that quantify what percentage of its bandwidth is utilized during peak periods as well as quantify what excess storage capacity they have on hand. Many MSPs use these reports to do trending to keep sufficient unused capacity available for sudden growth but can also more easily ramp up with more network and storage capacity when new clients sign up for its service. However the reports consumers should expect and what they will pay for backup services from an MSP can vary dramatically.

MSPs targeting SOHO clients receive almost no technical end user scrutiny for one simple reason – the consumer/SOHO end of the market is very price sensitive and therefore receives fewer business-class services. Features that one should typically expect from an MSP supporting SOHOs include:

• Free email support
• Little or no in-depth reporting
• Optional fee-based recovery options such as a CD or thumb drive
• Web based recoveries

However with usually attractive price points come limitations in terms of what services users should expect when performing backups and recoveries.

For instance, users should exercise caution in using these SOHO MSPs to back up applications that require certain files to remain open all or most of the time. Though most now integrate and support open files for desktop applications such as, any specialized applications or databases that users constantly keep open may never have their files successfully backed up.

Recovering data can also become an adventure. Recoveries are almost always limited to web-based recoveries so if users need to recover data in another fashion, such as receive the data on a CD or USB thumb drive, it may take up to a week to receive the data at an extra cost.

The Differences Emerge
MSPs servicing businesses with 50 or more employees and higher amounts of data to back up on a nightly basis (50 GB or greater) will share certain characteristics but will also differ in what other support services they offer and even from whom users might obtain their services. MSPs providing backup services to these clients will typically share some common features, including the use of agentless backup software, WAN optimization, redundant data centers, high bandwidth network pipes and support for multiple operating systems. Key differences that will emerge between MSPs include:

• Account management
• Data management
• Recovery options

MSPs can also differ in how they optimize the management of client data as part of the backup process. MSPs generally price their backup service based on how much data clients back up so any steps clients can take to minimize how much data they back up or on what tier of storage they keep it while they store it with the MSP will help users keep their backup costs down.

MSPs using only backup software can generally deliver recoveries of files in less than an hour. However when needing to recover an entire application which may have tens of GBs of data associated it with it, rebuild times using backup software could run into the hours, which is not acceptable for every application.

To augment this, some MSPs offer high availability options where users can do near real-time replication of certain applications to their data center so users can perform near real-time application recoveries. Many MSPs offer this optional add-on service for which users can pay an additional fee for hot-site disaster recovery for specific applications.

Choosing the right MSP to provide backup services for your company is now a more complicated selection process than just doing a Google search and choosing the first one that happens to appear in the Google search results. MSPs now go well beyond offering basic server backup and recovery options with MSPs segmenting into SOHO, SMB and enterprise class offerings. While all provide online backup services, not all do it the same way or use the same backup software.

MSPs servicing SOHOs will generally provide agent-based products, low costs and little or no ongoing support. MSPs servicing the SMB and enterprise markets will generally offer agentless software, deeper technical reports and assist users in determining how much of their data they need to back up, how much network bandwidth they need and even help users minimize the amount of data they need to back up. However users who need near real-time recoveries should consider holding out for enterprise class MSPs who can offer these higher levels of service.