United Learning, a nationwide group of independent schools and academies, has chosen infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider Securstore’s hybrid cloud offering to backup its data.
United Learning takes care of 20 academies and 11 independent schools, with 30,000 students and 5,500 staff. As it deals with sensitive personal data of the students and staff, the organisation needed a provider that could guarantee data security and confidentiality.
Additionally, as it has so much data to backup, the group decided that public cloud would not suit its requirements. These two factors led United Learning to choose Securstore’s hybrid cloud model, which is comprised of dedicated infrastructure situated in the organisation’s own data centre with a secondary, replicated, system in Securstore’s facility.
"Once you have terabytes of data to back up, the market options become more limited - often the solution is not recognised, cannot support the infrastructure or the costs make it unaffordable,” said Dick Rowley, systems manager at United Learning.
“With Securstore, the hybrid model suited our environment and it is delivered under a flat rate fee. The company’s support is 24/7 and the team is extremely proactive in informing me of any problems,” he added.
Securstore is also ISO 27001 certified by the British Standards Institute and accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS).
Alexander Eiriksson, COO of Securstore, said: “Hybrid or private cloud deployment is the only way forward when backing up large volumes of data. Long term, this gives the customer more control, flexibility and scalability in their overall backup strategy."
