Wellies manufacturer automates data backups

Hunter chose an online backup system over traditional storage

Wellington boot manufacturer Hunter Boot has rolled out an online backup and recovery system to drive down costs and boost automation.

The implementation of the new platform followed an assessment of the firm's IT set-up carried out in June, which concluded that the previous backup arrangement could not cope with increasing numbers of servers.

"We did initially consider a number of proposed solutions based on storage area network and network attached storage technology. However, these proved too cost prohibitive as we would have to build the infrastructure from the bottom up," said Hunter Boot IT manager Sandy MacDonald.

"We settled on the online backup approach as the process was automated and required no action on our part."

MacDonald said the decision to go for an internet-based system was also influenced by the possibility of breaking down the monthly cost of the service per gigabyte.

"This helped in building a strong business case for the operations and finance directors to get the cost signed off," she said.

The system, provided by Iron Mountain Digital, covers business data across the firm's sites in Edinburgh, London and New York. It went live in December following a one-month trial period.