Ashridge New Media is a thriving consultancy based in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Headed up by owner-director Ed Lecky-Thompson, it specialises in four key areas – engineering, consulting, digital marketing and incubation. DataFort 3.0 has been chosen in favour of tape drives to backup all of the agency’s business critical data. The software-based system is triggered each night, replicating the company’s data to DataFort’s highly secure storage facility.

Lecky-Thompson is a long-term DataFort user. Before founding Ashridge New Media, he used it to protect his own personal documents. “I had used various methods of data backup in the past,” he reports. “All usually tape-based systems such as DAT, DLT and Travan. But I was persistently negligent in remembering to swap tapes every night! I also wanted to move to a ‘plug in and go’ solution, both for Ashridge New Media and for our clients.”

Having previously forgotten to set up tape backups – one of the most common causes of lost business data – Ashridge New Media now enjoys automated reports from DataFort 3.0 each day. It also praises the system’s ‘strong levels of encryption’, a vital business requirement with hacking and virus attacks currently rising exponentially.

The first Ashridge New Media client to adopt DataFort 3.0 is eight-year old, Essex-based personnel advisors, RLT Associates. The system’s transparency and reliability fitted well with RLT’s ethos. “We do not use behavioural jargon or urge you to hug trees,” says RLT. “We do provide solutions that are based on years of experience on what is likely to work rather than on the latest business school fads.”

“DataFort is one of the UK’s original offsite backup vendors,” explains DataFort founder and CEO, Gavin Smith. “We’ve been singing the praises of this concept for three years now. In the case of Ashridge New Media, it has recognised that backing up to tape drives is incredibly unreliable, not least because physical tapes degrade over time. It has also benefited from our pay-per-gigabyte usage policy, which means that DataFort is just as viable a solution for Ed Lecky-Thompson at home as it is as the MD of a busy agency.