Gothenburg University has chosen to purchase a storage service from archiving and storage specialists Proact. This contract means that Proact will be supplying disk space on a rolling basis and as required, including backups, technical support, consultancy services and operation. This is all included in a package solution whereby Gothenburg University will be paying for the service on a per GB and per month basis. This means that the university does not need to invest in a storage infrastructure of its own, or pay for storage resources they are not using.

Gothenburg is home to one of the biggest universities in Northern Europe, with more than 65 000 students and over 5000 staff. The university’s information levels have increased massively over the past few years. The current staff did not have time to deal with the old backup solution, which was rapidly approaching its best-before date, and finding the people to do it for them was hard.

The Proact storage service saves the university money and means they never have to worry about running out of storage space.

“The amounts of data we handle is constantly growing, and we want to focus our energies on other IT issues. This is why we feel that having Proact deal with storage for us is an appropriate solution. The Storage Service Provider, or SSP, offered by Proact is flexible and can grow to ten times its size with no problems. And moreover, this is the most cost effective solution,” says Jonas Bцrjesson, OS Operations Manager at Gothenburg University.

The Proact solution includes snapshot technology, which means that backups of all data are made regularly during working hours. This allows users to easily and quickly recreate files deleted in error. And to prevent the same data from being stored in a number of locations, Gothenburg University uses deduplication technology. This involves the system compressing data and making sure that no duplicates are saved.

– We are seeing a rapid increase in the demand for purchasing storage and backup/recovery as a combined service. “I view this as a clear sign that the market for services relating to storage has matured,” says Martin Цdman, Proact’s Regional Manager in Gothenburg.

The SSP solution has been implemented and is operational at Gothenburg University. The contract with Proact will remain in force for five years.