When SurfKitchen wanted a best in class back up solution they turned to Interxion with its reputation as a leading provider of online back up solutions and data centre services
SurfKitchen is a market-leader in On Device Portal applications for the mobile operator market. SurfKitchen’s platform results in an enhanced user experience for mobile users. SurfKitchen’s simple logical menus ensure easy discovery, consumption and repeat usage of mobile data services.
SurfKitchen’s platform enables digital content to be sent over-the-air and stored on a wide range of handsets from feature phones to smartphones ensuring the end-user always has fresh, dynamic content. Surfkitchen provides operators with the right applications and support to increase data usage, customer loyalty and ultimately to reduce churn.
SurfKitchen’s solutions have been deployed by major operators throughout the world including; Orange Group (UK, France, Netherlands, Spain, Poland), Telstra, Telenor (Norway), Telefonica Moviles Espagne, Maxis, Etisalat, ALJAWAL (Saudi Telecom Corp) and Batelco.
The company was founded 1999 and is headquartered in the UK. During 2006 SurfKitchen expanded into the US, Australia, Spain and Singapore. The company has plans to continue growth globally over the next few years.
"The SurfKitchen platform is the foundation of our business. A huge amount of R&D went into the product and the resulting data is priceless. It is mission critical; in fact it is ‘the crown jewels’ of the company. Any loss of data could have very serious consequences for our operations. As we embarked on our international expansion we decided to look at backup and restore services available in the market to identify a solution that could best fit our needs," said Richard Oliver, CFO, SurfKitchen.
The Challenge. SurfKitchen is experiencing rapid and continued growth and with that a greater demand on its IT Infrastructure. As a result of its growth, the company has increased the amount of data and information, highlighting a greater need for security.
SurfKitchen researched the functionality and capabilities of backup and restore solutions in the market that would fit with its current and future business requirements for expansion.
The overriding objective of the selection process was to identify a fully supported backup solution that was secure, reliable, cost effective and guaranteed data recovery for each of its office locations in the event of data loss.
Prior to selecting Interxion’s Secure Data Service (SDS), SurfKitchen relied on manually using back up tapes located in the server room at its site in Reading. It estimated that it was taking around two to three hours per week of an IT manager’s time, which equates to approximately one month of that person’s salary per year.
Specifically SurfKitchen was looking for a solution that;
- Required no up-front investment in hardware, software or installation
- Offered a highly resilient back up solution that could be replicated to ensure extra security
- Automatically stored the data offsite using the existing Internet connections
- Was easy to set up and required minimum user interaction once set up
- Allowed SurfKitchen’s international offices to perform scheduled data backups, at multiple locations on a daily or hourly basis without the need for human intervention
- Could be utilised for laptops so staff on the move could back up data whilst travelling or located at other sites
- Allowed SurfKitchen to back up and restore a whole network, servers, PC hard drives, databases, files or individual e-mails
- Allowed SurfKitchen to back up live applications (like exchange and SQL)
- Had a short backup window
- Used a high level security protocol (128/256 encryption) and was customer key protected.
The existing solution of back up tapes could only just cope with the amount of data and complexity and it required specific software skills, proper tape maintenance, checking and rotation by an IT person.
“As the company grew the volume of data spiralled and it was questionable as to whether all servers were sufficiently backed up on a regular basis. It was simply proving too hard to manage and how secure our data was in a potential disaster was open to question. Without onsite IT support in all of our new offices, we wanted a solution that was quick and easy to get up and running, simple to use with minimum human intervention and solved the operational complexity of the traditional backup procedures.
“We wanted to ensure all our locations benefited the same level of security of data. As we grow, we want to leave the majority of our employees to concentrate on our core business and revenue generation without having to worry about manual IT back up solutions, ” continued Richard Oliver.
Why Secure Data Service from Interxion?
On-line disk based backup solutions such as SDS do not require up-front investments, minimise manual interventions, thus reducing operational costs, are user-friendly and highly reliable. The technology allows users to automatically transfer data to a remote location (data centre). Replicating the data in one or more data centre locations can provide additional security and redundancy. In the case of SurfKitchen, Interxion provides replication from a vault in Amsterdam to a second Interxion data centre located in London.
“Our IT Manager knew of Interxion and its reputation as a leading provider of online back up solutions and data centre services.
“We wanted a best in class back up solution with the ability to provide replication for additional security. Interxion met these requirements with SDS and its European network. It is a straightforward and intuitive solution that provides us with the guarantee of non-hackable and highly encrypted data.
“I believe that the security of data should be a hygiene factor of the business – it should be happening behind the scenes. We should be safe in the knowledge our IP (Intellectual Property) is secure, leaving us to generate business for the company. Our data is worth tens of millions to us and it is vital that it remains secure. Interxion gives us the security and reassurance that our data is safe,” adds Richard Oliver.
SurfKitchen selected an advanced service level agreement to provide extra guarantees against data loss. The company has begun to see the benefits of working with SDS. It has impacted the business in a good way by improving productivity and limiting time drain on IT resources. It is a failsafe solution that is taken care of, leaving IT staff to focus on other tasks.
The mobile data industry continues to grow rapidly and competition is becoming fierce to secure the network operators. Reliable IT and secure data is a vital component for success. By choosing Interxion, SurfKitchen has selected a long-term partner who can support them as they grow, providing peace of mind that its data remains secure, leaving it to focus on its business.