Middletons instead turned to a fully managed online data backup solution, after consulting backup specialists Global Storage to review their needs, with the vendor eventually coming up with a solution to better manage their data, and the associated business risks.

Global Solutions presented Middletons with DataReady, a solution combining data de-duplication technology with its own network design for fast backups.

According to Global Solutions, the technology is different in that most existing backup software will focus on incremental change resulting in approximately 10 per cent change per day of block level data. Through data de-duplication technology, the focus is placed on binary change, looking for commonality and ultimately, resulting in only one per cent data change a day.

Sam Sofianos, director of technology services at Middletons, said backup windows are sigificantly reduced with the technology as less data needs to be transmitted, minimising the pressure on infrastructure. "This gives us the ability to have multiple backups per day and mission critical data can be backed up as frequently as at 15 minute intervals," he said.