Press Release (U.S.)

Survey Shows Lack of IT Resources Cause for Not Backing Up Remote Office Data to Central Location
ESG Branch Office Optimization research study evaluates ROBO backup from both offsite and headquarter perspectives

TORONTO – November 21, 2006 – The main reason that organizations fail to back up remote office/branch office (ROBO) data over a LAN to a central location is due to a lack of IT resources, results from a recently conducted survey indicate, with 40 percent of respondents indicating their companies do not have centralized backup of offsite locations in place.

Enterprise Strategy Group’s Branch Office Optimization research survey, commissioned by Asigra™, the technology specialists in agentless remote backup and recovery software, is believed to be the first industry survey that has looked at how companies safeguard mission-critical information throughout the enterprise from the vantage point of those working at both corporate headquarters and in ROBO locations. Three-quarters of respondents worked in central offices with the remaining 25 percent in remote locations.

Among the mid-project findings:

• 25 percent of respondents had 100 or more remote/branch offices with 17 percent having between 26 and 99.


• 60 percent of remote offices have up to 25 servers they need to protect, indicating that a significant amount of critical data is residing outside the data center.


• Nearly half of respondents say they have concerns about lack of security at ROBO locations.


• 48 percent indicate they host home-grown applications out of necessity.


• 30 percent of respondents would likely purchase ROBO data protection from existing vendors, while 44 percent said they would consider both existing and new vendors.

“The number one reason why organizations have ROBOs access applications remotely over the WAN is to improve data protection,” said Brian Garrett, an analyst at ESG. “The adoption of ROBO software is ready to explode. ROBO backup software companies are going to be incredibly busy in the next 12-26 months.”

“A top priority for many organizations is removing IT infrastructure from ROBO locations in order to quell concerns for the quality of offsite data and to ensure its protection by entrusting it to knowledgeable and competent staff,” said Eran Farajun, Executive Vice President of Asigra. “By removing tape backup equipment from ROBO locations and enabling centralized D2D backup of business-critical information, enterprises are better able to manage multi-site backup and recovery without the need to increase IT infrastructure and costs.”

Asigra’s Televaulting™ ROBO software eliminates many backup pain points through technology that is designed for enterprise-wide centralization, built from the ground up to perform on a global level. It is tested and certified compatible by leading infrastructure providers not to take the place of data center backup software, but complement it for multi-site backup and recovery. Business benefits that differentiate Asigra's offering from other backup solutions include addressing compliance regulations with offsite encrypted data protection, reduction in worldwide IT management expenditures, and compounded reduction of both hardware/software capital and enterprise-wide license costs. Asigra offers a ‘pay-as-you-grow’ compressed-capacity-based licensing model, allowing users to pay only for storage under management.

About Asigra
Asigra is the award-winning leader in remote office/branch office online backup/recovery with more than three petabytes of data under protection. Since 1986, the company’s agentless Televaulting solution has centralized data management and eliminated the pricing and performance problems created by agent-based tape backup software in multi-site enterprises. Televaulting addresses state, Federal and international regulatory compliance demands by backing up remote/branch office data to the data center. Data is encrypted both in-flight over the WAN and at rest. Televaulting is offered by leading resellers and service providers worldwide to deliver highly secure data protection. Privately held Asigra is headquartered in Toronto, Canada with partner offices located globally. For more information, visit www.asigra.com.

Editors Note: To discuss the findings of ESG’s Branch Office Optimization survey, please call Brian Garrett at 508-482-0188, or Eran Farajun at 416-736-8111 for more information.