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Protecting critical data

Established in 2008, Quartile Capital is a Johannesburg-based boutique financial services company. 100% black-owned and with a Level One Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) Contributor rating by Empowerdex, Quartile Capital provides corporate finance, treasury, consulting and investments services to both public and private sector clients.

The team of about 20 professionals have extensive experience in the areas of corporate finance, financial consulting, financial modelling, capital raising, feasibility studies, project management, as well as aligning infrastructure projects to the government’s new growth path and development priorities.

As Quartile Capital continues to grow, so technology plays an increasingly important role in protecting sensitive client information, ensuring measurable results for its clients and stakeholders, and providing a solid foundation for the development of innovative ideas and knowledge leadership.

In the area of data protection and backup, Quartile Capital’s current solution (using hard drives physically located at the office) was becoming cumbersome and risky. Backups had to be performed manually and the solution was not easily scalable as the volume of data increased. All of the firm’s data was vulnerable to the risks of fire, theft and physical damage to the storage devices.

The solution was to commission Altonet, South Africa’s only HP Autonomy Elite Partner, to deploy and integrate the HP Autonomy LiveVault solution – encrypting and backing up Quartile Capital’s critical company data.

“This private cloud solution gives Quartile Capital absolute peace-of-mind over its data,” notes Altonet’s CEO Gareth Tudor, explaining that the Turbo Restore appliance runs an automated on-site backup every 15 minutes. “So it is truly a case of ‘leave it and forget about it’,” he remarks.

The TRA is in-turn backed up to Altonet’s off-site vaults located in Isando and Midrand, which are mirrored for total back-up security.

Tudor adds that Quartile’s IT management now enjoy the flexibility of setting the retention periods for every class of documents, as well as being able to perform remote data restores from anywhere, at any time, via a simple Web-based interface.

“Adopting a best-of-breed data protection strategy helps to reduce costs and complexities when compared with their previous approach. Having a ‘pay-as-you-use’ model ensures the costs remain as low as possible,” he explains, “and the solutions are robust and easily scalable, so that they can grow with the organisation”.

Advanced encryption means that sensitive information concerning clients including government organisations, is well protected and accessible only by those Quartile professionals who are required to work with the clients in question.

“Our strategy is to be recognised as a trusted partner and knowledge leader that is known for finding innovative solutions for our clients,” notes Quartile CEO Modise Motloba. “In order to fully leverage our independence, agility and expertise, it is essential we operate with the latest technology and with the Altonet HP data protection deployment, our data is secure and accessible at any time, and as we continue growing the business at a rapid pace, we have complete peace of mind that our data is fully protected.”

Tudor says that with the data now de-duplicated and securely housed, the focus can now shift towards getting more out of the data such as employing sophisticated analysis and business intelligence (BI) solutions to promote effective business decision-making.

“In many ways, data protection is the first step of a multi-phased journey to capitalise on that most precious resource within any organisation – its data,” he notes.

Tudor says that this is the second largest financial services firm Altonet has worked with in recent months, to deploy enterprise-class data protection via the HP Autonomy LiveVault offering, a trend that illustrates Altonet’s growing involvement in the financial services industry.

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