Kiddicare ends tape backup challenges

Established in 1974 and headquartered in Peterborough, Kiddicare is an international baby specialist. After a 2011 acquisition by supermarket chain Morrisons, Kiddicare increased the number of retail locations to 11 stores nationwide, in addition to online and mobile stores. Kiddicare’s product line includes a wide range of products including cots, high chairs, car seats, clothing, prams, toys, and more.

Kiddicare was faced with having to backup multiple remote store locations using a legacy tape system whilst challenged to meet a restore Service Level Agreement of just four hours. The tape backup system had trouble scaling as Kiddicare grew and became a security issue with locally stored backup data containing personally identifiable information (PII) that included payment and account data. The decision was made to use encrypted backup offsite to prevent unauthorised internal and external access to the data.

Kiddicare decided to migrate to Active8IT’s Cloud Backup™ service Powered by Asigra software to automate the company’s backup and recovery processes. The transition provided the ability to easily set up a backup schedule with policy-based retention rules for compliance purposes across all locations that could be managed from a single interface. As a result, Kiddicare now has high-speed automated cloud recovery at their fingertips, ending the management headaches and lackluster performance of tape backup.

“We needed to find a suitable solution to protect the data at each retail location and transfer it to our headquarters in Peterborough, so we turned to Active8IT because of their dedicated ability to provide quality IT services to our organisation,” said John Mack, IT Engineer, Kiddicare. “The switch to a cloud backup solution has accomplished several business benefits. Not only has it eliminated our need for tape and the potential problems that come with that technology, but it has brought ease and speed to restoring the files that keep us running at Kiddicare.”

“By supporting Kiddicare’s IT department for specialised projects, we realised the benefits that Asigra Cloud Backup would provide Kiddicare with their expansion of data and retail locations,” said Catherine Batley, Marketing Manager, Active8IT. “In addition to military-grade security and much simpler management, the cloud backup solution by Asigra accomplished our primary goal which was faster data recovery. This was key to Kiddicare and a primary benefit to our organisation.”

“Such acknowledgement of the performance and reduced backup time requirements indicated by Kiddicare echo the feedback we receive from Asigra users around the world,” said Tracy Staniland, Vice President, Corporate Marketing, Asigra. “Asigra’s automated backup solution ensures reliable recovery and frees up valuable IT resources that would have otherwise been spent on managing tape so that IT professionals can focus on more strategic operations.”