Press Release (U.K.)

NBJ Insurance Group Moves to Multi-site Backup with Outsourced IT Services Provider
oncoreIT Provides London Insurance Firm with Asigra’s Televaulting Capabilities

London, 14 Nov 2005 – Asigra, the technology specialist in agentless distributed backup and recovery software for network computing, today announced that NBJ Insurance Group (NBJ) is using its online distributed backup software, delivered by oncoreIT, a remote outsourced IT solutions provider for small and medium sized businesses. oncoreIT now provides NBJ, a leading insurance and risk management broker, with a complete suite of managed and integrated services across its three offices, deploying Asigra’s Televaulting software as part of the outsourced offering.

NBJ now has a complete reliable IT solution across all its London offices. The new solution is a move away from ageing networks and inefficient IT processes, and improves IT consistency and communication between the three offices. NBJ’s original IT system was not cost-effective and was unreliable. It did not meet the IT strategic goals of NBJ. Due to the inefficiencies of the old system, there was a level of incredulity at the corporate board level that a new IT system could prove beneficial to the company in terms of achieving IT strategy and return on investment (ROI). Initially the board were reluctant to invest in improving the company’s IT processes. However, once oncoreIT demonstrated its managed service package, which includes capabilities such as Asigra’s remote online data backup, secure access for remote workers, and 24x7 support and monitoring, NBJ realised the true benefits of oncoreIT’s service. The offering covers the provision of all infrastructure equipment plus the desktop hardware and software.

Neal Fox, NBJ Group CEO, said; “Outsourcing to oncoreIT has bred a new confidence at both board member level and within our staff that IT inefficiencies are a thing of the past. With oncoreIT’s managed services that utilise the highest quality products in the market, such as Asigra’s online backup software, we are functioning efficiently within and across the networks at our three offices. We were finding it particularly challenging to manage our IT infrastructure from three disparate offices and wanted a service that would centralise our IT processes. Asigra’s software and the remote access provided by oncoreIT have solved this issue and have also made the solutions financially viable.”

oncoreIT’s complete managed service incorporates Asigra Televaulting software for remote online data backup with with other services that include: 24x7 monitoring, alerting with proactive fault resolution, email anti-virus/spam filtering and secure remote access for home and tele-workers to the entire NBJ group. In addition to these IT benefits, NBJ required remote access across all locations in order to run its internal specialist insurance application, and oncoreIT was able to deliver this capability to NBJ with the added assurance of Asigra’s distributed backup and recovery software.

“NBJ has immediately reaped the benefits of us taking full responsibility of its core IT requirements,” said Roland Mann, Managing Director of oncoreIT. “The offsite backup provided by Asigra is an integral part of the IT services we provide. In addition, with Asigra Televaulting’s software, we can deliver a complete IT service against strict SLAs (Service Level Agreement) for an initial 3 year, fixed contract basis, made possible with Asigra’s comprehensive SLA software, and capacity based license charges, ensuring that NBJ will never again be subject to artificially high running costs.”

Eran Farajun, executive vice-president of Asigra, said, “By incorporating Asigra Televaulting into NBJ’s IT solution, oncoreIT was able to deliver online backup and remote access to all workers at all locations. Asigra’s software fits in perfectly with oncoreIT’s remote access service, while also meeting NBJ’s exact IT and SLA requirements.”

At each customer site, a single Asigra Televaulting DS-Client software identifies all servers, desktops and laptops connected to the local network, and automates the backup of all local data assets. Before the backup data set is transmitted to oncoreIT’s data centre, Asigra Televaulting software analyses the data, finds new and changed file blocks, eliminates duplicate files and further compresses the residue bytes to ensure the backup set is as compact as possible. The software then encrypts the data before sending it over an IP- WAN connection to a centralised Asigra Televaulting DS-System server, located in oncoreIT’s data centre, which consolidates the backup data from all distributed sites. Data is encrypted “in-flight” and “at-rest.” The DS-System server is protected like other servers within the data centre as determined by the organisation’s ongoing data protection policies. Moreover, the back-end DS-System server integrates directly with third-party ILM solutions from the major storage vendors. As an additional level of data protection, oncoreIT has configured the DS-System server to replicate the vault to a second secure back up site.

About NBJ
Established over 40 years ago, the NBJ Insurance Services Group has helped its clients, both corporate and personal with all their insurance requirements. Each company in the group has developed in its own particular areas of experience yet maintained inter-relationships to allow cross referral and support. NBJ Insurance Services Group comprises Norman Butcher & Jones Ltd (Lloyd’s Broker); Randall Butcher Jones Ltd (Commercial & Personal Insurance Broker); NBJ United Kingdom Ltd (Commercial Insurance Broker). NBJ Group is a registered Lloyds Broker, providing expertise in business and personal insurance, and is fully independent. For more information visit the company website at www.nbj.co.uk.

About oncoreIT
oncoreIT provides a 24/7 managed IT service for small and medium sized businesses, incorporating both hardware and solutions for a complete outsourced IT solution. OncoreIT partners with best of breed vendors to provide an IT management service that only a large corporate would normally have access to. Services include: remote IS management; provision of all hardware equipment and software licenses; disaster recovery; remote (offsite) backup and recovery; firewall provisioning; desktop management; bandwidth management; equipment hosting and replacement; monitoring and alerting; and email filtering. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.oncoreIT.com.

About Asigra
Founded in 1986, Asigra is the award-winning specialist in agentless distributed data backup and recovery solutions for network computing. With Asigra's Televaulting software, enterprises and service providers can reliably protect mission-critical information across all their geographically dispersed "data islands," whether those islands reside on servers, desktops or laptops. Leading all other distributed backup and restore disk-to-disk software vendors, more than 3 petabytes of data is protected with Asigra Televaulting. The privately held company is based in Toronto, Canada. For more information, visit the company's website at www.asigra.com.