Investment in managed data backup service pays off for Soho Square Capital

That’s precisely what the UK based investment firm Soho Square Capital did when they chose to help finance cloud data management experts Assured Data Protection, and what a useful investment it has turned out to be. Dan Ensor, the firm’s Head of IT, explains why having direct access to a professionally run, and fully managed enterprise grade solution is a huge comfort for a private equity company such as theirs.

Most firms with under 30 employees have limited IT resources. In some cases, they may not have a dedicated IT person, with the responsibility falling to a non-technical member of the team. That’s why businesses are so dependent on cloud and SaaS platforms these days. It’s the same here. I’m the sole IT resource, and we need SaaS tools to help us manage operations. We’re an investment firm able to invest up to £40 million in any given transaction. Consequently, we manage funds and sensitive data, which makes us an attractive target for threat actors. A security breach or system failure is a significant risk. Anyone working in the financial sector will understand this problem. Which is why having a strong cyber security posture and a resolute cloud DR and backup function in place is essential. So, it made sense to hand the reins over to a managed service provider (MSP) with immutable backups and second site replication capabilities that we could fall back on in the event of an outage, ransomware attack or natural disaster.

Addressing cloud complexities

It’s worth pointing out that a company’s size doesn’t always reflect the complexity of its IT systems and infrastructure. With public cloud access a small business can spin up any number of servers across AWS or Azure instances. The cloud lets you scale indefinitely regardless of the headcount within the business. The trick is to match your cloud requirements with the optimum level of data backup.

We achieved this by working with a managed service business that we also happened to have invested in due to the fact that it is a rapidly growing company that has cornered the market in the provision of Rubrik cloud data management as-a-service. It was the first and now the largest MSP of Rubrik, which has become the industry gold standard for immutable backups. Suffice to say that Assured Data Protection ticks all the boxes as an MSP too. Its expertise in cloud data management is invaluable to a company like ours, covering data backup and recovery, business continuity and data compliance.

Responsiveness and support add comfort factor

Our previous solution served its purpose, providing us with overnight backups and email updates, but nothing as instantaneous as the service Assured Data Protection delivers. We can track data to any point in time, across any drive, server or database, on premises or off premises. It has also allowed us to consolidate data and systems that were running on separate backups. Knowing where all our data is located has allowed us to be more efficient and diligent with data management in terms of compliance and managing legacy data and systems. There’s also the added reassurance that if something should happen, we know everything is recoverable.

The user interface is also excellent, it’s clear and intuitive, which makes it easy to use and access reports. You could easily hand over responsibility to a non-technical member of the team for short term cover. Which brings me to the level of all round support we receive, it’s staggering. The MSP team is so responsive to any request. If I have a question, I typically get an answer within 10-15 minutes via phone or email, and that’s on top of the constant reports and updates we receive.

Larger organisations take it for granted that a team would be working in the background. Which is why I can’t emphasise enough what a comfort it is for an SME business to have access to an enterprise grade solution, run by a team focused on delivering first-rate customer service. We may be an investor, but never once have I felt we were receiving specialist treatment, it’s just down to the high standards they maintain as an MSP.

Managing growth with confidence

We’ve been so impressed that we are now considering offering the MSP service to our other portfolio companies (the other companies Soho Square has invested in). Bringing all our portfolio companies under the same roof would help us to better manage risk for all parties. We’d adhere to the same standards and have the same levels of protection and data management. Assured Data Protection has given us the confidence to scale, allowing us to spin up new servers and databases, or host services in other markets as we expand. It all adds to the comfort factor that we already feel, knowing we have an MSP that’s got our back.