Group Telecom (GT) – a facilities-based Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) based in Toronto – is slated to provide Calgary-based JAWS Technologies Inc.’s on-line data backup and recovery solutions to its small and medium-size business clients.
JAWS Secure Network Storage Division offers customers the ability, via the Internet, to automatically back up, archive and restore data easily and quickly, according to Bob Mahood, vice-president of corporate development with JAWS.
“The battle, in my mind at least, is around how do you take your bandwidth and how do you make it different than other companies’ bandwidth? By adding an application like the Internet-based data backup and recovery system that JAWS has, it’s an application that differentiates the product from competitors.”
GT, by utilizing JAWS’ infrastructure, will soon launch a network, application and hosting services offering that will allow customers to back up all networks and associated PCs to a remote data storage location over their Internet connection, according to GT’s vice-president of marketing, Steven Koles.
“(JAWS is) essentially bringing us time to market, the ability for us to leverage their offering on a wholesale basis and be able to bring it to our customers quickly and before our competitors can build or create their own similar private label capabilities,” he said.
Customers will be able to either manually or automatically back up their data anytime and from any workstation. And recovering data is as easy as backing it up, according to Mahood.
“I think of it as an automated, worry-free, backup system,” he said.
Mahood added: “Through the launch of our data vaulting products earlier this year, we are the first to offer complete end-to-end secure information management solutions. Our agreement with Group Telecom works to increase the availability of our secure storage products to a wider base of customers.”
According to Toronto-based IDC Canada Ltd. analyst Dan McLean, “They’re trying to create a value-add for the telecom to offer on-line backup and storage – that’s a pretty neat thing. We’re starting to see a lot of this, and what’s emerging are a lot of companies that are providing backup and recovery services on-line.”
Citing the vulnerability of laptops being stolen or dropped and people not remembering to back up files, McLean added: “Instead of storing everything on their desktop machine, what they would do is access files from some remote and secure location, work on them and have these things automatically backed up to those repositories.”
With JAWS, data is stored at a separate location from the client system to maximize data protection. According to Mahood, the sites were designed specifically for maximum security and rapid post-disaster recovery, assuring information is always available. And, according to JAWS, for added security, the facilities meet all Dominion Fire Commission Standards as well as all current National Building Code standards, as well as security on a 24 by 7 basis.
“What we have is seven layers of security that are built in right from encryption through to proprietary compression algorithms through to the physical security of the data centre, challenge and response entry to the data system, the use of tokens and so on,” Mahood said.
Asked to describe the need for this type of application, Mahood said, “This is an application that drives bandwidth usage and, of course, as you drive bandwidth usage and bandwidth increases, the price falls, which attracts more applications – we’re part of that whole cycle. This service specifically, and other ones we have as well, are really applications that are going to drive bandwidth usage.”
Koles said his company offers great service level agreements “across the board.” Mahood added that “recovery on a file basis is basically within minutes.”
According to JAWS, customers only pay for the services they need at any particular time and the service requires no initial capital investment or on-going maintenance costs. JAWS provides storage needs ranging from 500MB for $69.95 to 100GB for $5,500. More information is at www.gt.ca or www.jawstech.com.
