Enterprise Home Loans goes for online backup

The financial services market is fiercely competitive and being offline for even a day could mean losing potential customers. For a small mortgage provider such as Enterprise Home Loans, business continuity is a vital part of its survival.

‘We need to know that if something happens, we can be up and running very quickly, without losing too much data in the process,’ says Matthew Cramer, IT manager for the firm.

‘We can’t afford to spend a whole day playing catch-up, loading tapes or recovering information,’ he says.

For this reason, Enterprise Home Loans uses an online backup service from Iron Mountain Digital, which backs up all of the company’s information every 15 minutes.

Although the service is more expensive than other systems Cramer has tried, he says the reliability and ease-of-management of Iron Mountain Digital is better.

‘The service can back up directly from SQL data, which is ideal for us because we use a customised application with SQL Server and, previously, we were reliant on tape taken off-site at the end of each day,’ says Cramer.

‘We have a fast internet link, and this is an ideal way to make use of it.’

Another advantage of the service is that, because it is web-based, Enterprise Home Loans is able to back up and restore data from anywhere in the world.

‘If our offices were not accessible for whatever reason, we have the facilities to do a backup from somewhere else to keep us in business until we can get to the servers,’ says Cramer.

‘Although the service is a little more expensive than some on the market, it delivers – and that’s our priority.’