Archive for October, 2009

Casestudy: 5 Key Financial Institutions, India

PC Data growth and concerns surrounding its backup are not new, but some of the new age factors like mobility and ever growing emails have brought an interesting twist to the story. The pace of growth of data is now much more rapid, its location more dispersed and the linkage between data sets more complex. And this is especially true with large financial institutions, which have several “branch offices” and a large pool of mobile workforce.

When we approached major financial institutions in India, we were surprised to find that most of them did not have an end-user backup policy in place especially for the mobile workforce. Interestingly they had tried the available solutions, but were not convinced with the proposition.

After further dialogues, we could summarize unsolved concerns  as follows -

  1. The backup solution should not impact the user
  2. Centralized backup for multiple branch offices and mobile workforce
  3. Efficient bandwidth throttling and management
  4. Low impact on storage

We showcased and proposed inSync solution and proud to say that a large percentage of initial test deployments have already placed an order. Here are some of the brands we are proud to associate with -

Top Indian BFSI Customers



So, what makes inSync a favourite with this big brand names ?

Firstly, I think because its Simple.

Although none of the customers explicitly mentioned it, but I think “simplicity” is one of the most underrated characteristics of any product and specially when it comes to backup.

I must confess, not so long back, I personally tried to installed a product which starts with a “T” and ends with “li”. The battle ended after 2 days and I still not sure if I won it :) I strongly feel, that in this new “twitter” age, complexity is that last thing the world wants.

Simple “under 30 minutes” installation and clear-n-crisp pricing are the two features which have fuelled the exponential growth of this product. Most of these accounts didn’t have to spend more than a day to fully understand all the features and deploy within the first set of test users. In fact for one of the accounts, it was just 2 hours :)

Secondly, because it comes with some Unmatched Features.

InSync comes with some very disruptive features like -Druvaa inSync Laptop Backup for Enterprises

  1. Global source based data deduplication
  2. Continuous data protection
  3. Dynamic bandwidth and CPU scheduling
  4. WAN optimization
  5. Search based point-in-time recovery
  6. Managed end-point (client) upgrades
  7. Bare metal restore

And to best of my knowledge, most of these features are not offered by the existing products.

Third, because its Focused

Most of the existing products were developed to take care of traditional tape backups and now have been made to evolve to “backup servers, PCs and Laptops to disk/ tapes over LAN. And maybe sometimes help you to make some coffee” :)

We designed inSync from scratch,  just focussed on “laptops”.

For example, a server backup has strict calendar based schedule which doesn’t make much sense for laptops. The server backup solutions are designed for secure and reliable local networks, but the laptop backup solution must be friendly towards the insecure weak WAN links.

Almost all the administrators regularly use 95% of it’s features. And all the new additions are planned keeping in mind the laptop users.

Lastly, The Product Quality

Most of these accounts paid a premium for inSync compared to existing “established” products. But, I guess quality is surely remembered much after the cost is forgotten.

3 comments October 28th, 2009

Announcing inSync v3.1 Release

Happy to announce the new much awaited v3.1 release.  This is an incremental release.
Some of the highlights include  -New Release

  1. Performance improvements for full-pc sync and BMR
  2. Managed Clients Upgrade
  3. More powerful bandwidth management
  4. Sync on log-off and shut-down
  5. Upgrade for v2.2 customers



Performance Improvements
We were planning to surprise the customers by introducing a new much faster and scalable storage (code name “blackbird”), but was pulled out at the last moment because of some stability issues. It’s now being planned for next major release.

But, the new release does bring some awaited improvements and recommendations for full-PC backup and BMR (Bare Metal Restore). The users should see about 1.5-2x performance improvements in sync and restore speed.

Manage Clients Upgrade
This new exciting feature would allow the administrator to remotely upgrade the backup clients across organization. The admin would be able to “push” the updates for the users for a particular profile. But, only the clients with version v3.1 or higher would understand this new protocol, hence this feature will only be usable from v3.1.x :)

Better Bandwidth and CPU Management
With this release, the administrator would be able centrally choose and lock granular bandwidth and CPU prioritization for users of a particular profile. The admin would now be able to provision bandwidth differently for LAN and WAN based connections.

Sync on log-off and shut-down
This would be an optional setting and force user backups on log-off and shut-down for Windows based clients. This was heavily demanded by administrators managing mobile workforce.

We hope to release the v3.1 by Oct 22, 2009. Please use the link here to register for updates.

- Happy Diwali

3 comments October 16th, 2009


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