Saying that a huge majority of local firms has lost valuable data because of the lack of a cheap backup service, data center operator IP Converge has hooked up with software maker Symantec to provide a cloud-based backup offering targeted at local small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Top officials of IP Converge and Symantec Philippines unveiled the new service, dubbed ?IPC Backup Cloud?, on Tuesday, Feb. 12, in Makati City.
IP Converge Reynaldo R. Huergas said the company is now in a better position to reach out to the larger part of the market after being acquired last year by telco giant PLDT.
The backup-as-a-service (BaaS) product allows businesses to ensure data availability through periodic data transfers to the IPC BackupCloud system hosted in IP-Converge?s data center facility over a dedicated Internet connection.
The service, IP Converge said, allows companies to replicate and safeguard data automatically without having to spend huge capex on software licenses, servers, and storage devices.
Data backup is done on a regular basis for a monthly fee based on the amount of data backed up. The system also features deduplication technology which ensures that only changes made to the data are added to the existing backup.
Luichi Robles, Symantec?s senior country manager in the Philippines, pointed during the launch that the ability to quickly recover from a disaster cannot be overemphasized.
Robles cited a Symantec survey which found that 89 percent of local business has lost valuable information, with 73 percent of that vanished data considered as confidential.
He also noted that SMEs are struggling with basic backup with only 30 percent of them doing back-up daily, while less than 50 percent performs back-up weekly. A huge 74 percent does not have a disaster recovery plan, the executive added.
Moreover, he said the Philippines ranks as the third country in the world that is most prone and vulnerable to disasters based on the World Risk Report published by Germany-based Alliance Development Works in October 2012.
Huergas said the IPC BackupCloud is hosted locally in the IPC Data Center, ensuring that customers? data are kept in-country and allowing better network latency between system and customer.
