(Nomination for 2013 AUREA Award): Throne Solutions - Data backup software

Belgrade-based Throne Solutions has developed Throne (or M2Tech) CNBS (client network backup solutions) – an innovative solution that provides cutting-edge technology for data backup and disaster recovery (storing, copying, filing and checking). The idea for Throne CNBS as an independent backup software came as a result of a number of clients asking for a centralized backup service that would be supported by their company’s existing infrastructure.

Current solutions for the process of backing up and storing business data in domestic companies are not automated, require substantial human resources and are prone to error due to human factor, while available vendor solutions are either too expensive or unadaptable to domestic businesses.

From the aspect of technical characteristics, Throne CNBS is competitive with the world’s top backup products and, what is more, it utilizes an innovative approach and our internal know-how. Throne CNBS ensures a completely centralized data backup that is possible to implement without installing backup clients (additional software) on individual workstations and servers, which singles it out from other competitive solutions of popular companies like R1Soft and Acronis.

Throne CNBS is a solution designed to create a selective backup (of online workstations and servers) and bare metal restore offline backup, an incremental and differential backup on Linux and Microsoft Windows.

The use of this solution significantly lowers the costs of infrastructure and working hours of the IT department, it is supported by all operating systems (Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X i BSD) and heterogenous hardware infrastructures. It does not require any additional investment in hardware, but instead adapts to the existing system and easily transforms into a cloud backup solution at no additional licensing costs.

Throne CNBS comes with up to 50 percent lower prices of licenses (monthly/annually) for all options and system adjustments. This solution provides advanced characteristics and services to the user at no extra charge for additional features.

Throne CNBS is completely a result of domestic know-how, and Throne Solutions is the only company in Serbia to develop a backup solution, working on it over the previous three years. The product was completed in June 2012 and after it was successfully tested, the Milsped company decided to sign an agreement with Throne Solutions in September 2012 through its outsourcing company Procyon (additional adjustments are currently being made at the request of the company that provides outsourcing services to Milsped. The plan is to put CNBS into operation in that company within the next 30 days).

Analysis of the backup and disaster recovery software markets shows that these markets have been growing significantly over the past few years. A long-term objective of Throne Solutions is to create a Serbian company capable of competing with existing international IT companies, and it plans to achieve that by constantly investing in human resources and developing solutions.

INNOVATION

Throne CNBS is a centralized network backup solution which, unlike other competitive backup solutions, does not require an agent to be installed. That means that Throne CNBS can do the backup through the network with no need for the software to be installed on each workstation and server.

Throne CNBS is a backup and disaster recovery solution designed to create a selective backup (of online workstations and servers) and bare metal restore offline backup, an incremental and differential backup on Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The idea for Throne CNBS as an independent backup software came as a result of a number of clients asking for a centralized backup service that would be supported by their company’s existing infrastructure.

The solution supports the use of several systems on one server and can be used to do the backup on Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, regardless of whether the operating system is 32 bit (k86) or 64 bit (k64).

Throne CNBS supports very complex functions and can be run on every operating system (Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X and BSD). The solution offers all key types of data storage, that is, backup, including: full, incremental, differential, and deduplication, which ensures substantial time and space savings, thus also saving clients money.

Among the other functions of this product are the following: granular control, backup encryption, self-user restore, bandwidth throttling, pause backup, scheduled backup, filter/policy, easy adaptation to cloud solutions and other functions that provide an additional edge and save both time and resources.

Implementation of Throne CNBS without an agent installation on workstations and servers saves the user company’s IT administrator working hours and accelerates the process of accessing servers and workstations. Cost-effectiveness is reflected in the fact that the costs of installing an agent of backup software designed by other manufacturers and its later upgrades are much too high. Practical values are also seen in the following: no collision with the user company’s security policies (over the installation of additional software), substantially greater user-friendliness of the backup environment, and easier daily backup.

Throne CNBS does not require any additional investment in hardware, but instead adapts to the existing system. Throne Solutions tests solutions in a very short time and educates staff on how to use the graphical control system. It takes few clicks in a graphical user interface and no advanced programming knowledge and experience to administer the data backup/recovery process

Throne CNBS comes with up to 50 percent lower prices of licenses (monthly/annually) for all options and system adjustments. This solution provides advanced characteristics and services to the user at no extra charge for additional features.

Depending on the system size, it takes between 7 and maximum 30 days to implement, test and run Throne CNBS, which can be easily transformed into a cloud backup solution at no additional licensing costs.

Technical advantages of Throne CNBS

- All key steps can be taken through commands and options, which allows for the highest level of process automation and minimizes the chance of error due to human factor;

- The hostname, group, SID of cloned Windows clients change automatically;

- Backup of the files in use (locked) during the backup (e.g. pst while Outlook is in use.);

- Selective choice of directories to back up;

- Retrieving individual files from the backup archive without doing the whole backup;

- Automation and scheduling of operations; and

- Differential / incremental backup supported.

Throne Solutions is the sole owner of intellectual property rights to Throne(M2Tech) CNBS, which was patented in early 2012 at the Intellectual Property Institute of the Republic of Serbia.

SOCIAL UTILITY

After doing a market research in Serbia, Throne Solutions has come to a conclusion that data backup solutions are under-used, primarily due to much too high prices and inadaptability of services offered by international companies and inadequate existing solutions of companies in Serbia.

Current solutions for the process of backing up and storing business data in domestic companies are not automated, require substantial human resources and are prone to error due to human factor. Although the market offers process automation, it is due to high software price and subsequent maintenance costs that no chance to save some money is offered to companies that are very keen on making savings because of a very bad macroeconomic situation.

On the other hand, with the convergence towards European standards and the adoption of new laws regulating the use of electronic data, companies in Serbia will have to find a solution for storing their business data (laws adopted in the domain of electronic operations as well as Serbia’s approximation to the EU are in favor of Throne Solutions due to regulations that will force companies, banks and government institutions to store (for the period of between 2 and 20 years) and dislocate (not less than 80 kilometers away from their headquarters) their data).

Throne CNBS is completely a result of domestic know-how, and Throne Solutions is the only company in Serbia to develop a backup solution.

A long-term objective of Throne Solutions is to create a Serbian company capable of competing with existing international IT companies, which it plans to achieve by constantly investing in human resources and developing solutions.

At this moment, Throne Solutions has only one employee - Nebojsa Dencic, who is the director and co-owner of this company. Members of the Throne Solutions team are currently working as external consultants helping company in the initial phase. This year Throne Solutions wants to hire experts who developed Throne CNBS to continue to improve that solution and create new services in line with the company’s policy and market needs. Also, the plan is to hire experts from other sectors – sales, marketing, finance and law, as the main support to the development.

Throne Solutions plans to develop a large number of services pertaining to Throne CNBS in the following period. These services will relate to the Document Management System. Also, the plan is to develop additional backup functions for retrieving all data from machines. This feature will help clients reduce both required storage space and load on their network.

In December 2011 Throne CNBS was recognized as one of the promising business solutions by an international expert committee that presented it with a 2011 DISKOBOLOS Award. Competing with 128 candidates from the region, Throne CNBS won the Special DISCOBOLOS Award in the category of services.

FINANCIAL POTENTIAL

Throne CNBS backup solution has been developed over the last three years. The product was completed in June 2012 and put to test for 70 days at the Milsped company. Since the software passed the test successfully, Milsped decided to sign an agreement (through its outsourcing company) with Throne Solutions in September 2012.

The plan is to put CNBS into operation within the next 30 days and to test that software at companies Univerexport, CZR Scholc, Nectar and Delhaize over the following 45 days.

Throne Solutions was active in educating the market in 2012, with its representatives attending all important events focusing on IT technologies with the aim of approaching as big number of prospective clients as possible.

The company has already identified certain prospective clients in Serbia, including both private and public companies as well as subsidiaries of large multinationals operating in Serbia, banks, public and government institutions.

A short-term goal they want to achieve by the end of 2013 is to win more than 10 clients in Serbia who have recognized the quality of this solution and the need for securing their operations in a high quality manner. After 2013, they want to continue to grow and go international while also growing their business locally. The aim of the company is to establish cooperation with IT companies in the region to work with them on major projects related to data storage and security as well as the implementation and development of cloud services.

Market

Various analyses of the backup and disaster recovery software market have shown that it has been growing significantly over the past few years. The backup/recovery softver (software for keeping, copying, storing and rescuing data) market was valued at USD 3.1 billion in 2009, [1]and its value is projected to grow to USD 3.9 billion in 2014, at the annual growth rate of 4.6 percent.

In 2009 Throne Solutions ordered a market research on a sample of 100 medium-sized and large companies from the territory of the Republic of Serbia to find out about their needs for a backup solution. These companies were selected on the basis of several factors, such as annual revenues and the number of servers, workstations and employees. Managers of the IT departments of these companies were asked eight crucial questions with the aim of getting quality and measurable information and finding out what features should a backup solution have to meet their requirements. Some of these companies are the subsidiaries of large global corporations in Serbia. The results of this analysis have confirmed that the Throne CNBS solution satisfies the needs of these companies and that 75 percent of them are interested in buying the CNBS system.

The market research in Serbia has led Throne Solutions to a conclusion that data backup solutions are under-used, primarily due to much too high prices and inadaptability of services offered by international companies and inadequate existing solutions of companies in Serbia. This research has also shown that solutions offered by global vendors have a poor price/quality ratio as well as that companies using the existing backup and disaster recovery solutions are not satisfied with the product support provided by these vendors.

Throne Solutions believes that a key to its success lies in using its advantages, such as the flexibility, cheaper price and competitive quality of its solution, to win new clients who will be enabled to act in line with law and make significant savings in their operations.

New laws adopted in the domain of electronic operations as well as Serbia’s approximation to the EU are in favor of Throne Solutions due to regulations that will force companies, banks and government institutions to store (for the period of between 2 and 20 years) and dislocate (not less than 80 kilometers away from their headquarters) their data.

Besides, Throne CNBS comes with up to 50 percent lower prices of licenses (monthly/annually) for all options and system adjustments. Unlike the software solutions of other companies, this solution provides advanced characteristics and services to the user at no extra charge for additional features.

Competitive advantages of Throne CNBS

When compared to similar solutions of companies like IBM Tivoli, Microsoft, Symantec and EMC, the advantages of Throne Solutions’ M2Tech CNBS are as follows:

- Much more favorable offer than those of its competitors;

- Local, non-stop support (24/7) – technical team is situated locally and provides a more efficient and more favorable response to clients’ requests;

- Client does not have to buy additional hardware components, M2Tech CNBS adapts to the existing system;

- Throne CNBS backs up workstations or servers on all operating systems (Microsoft, Linux, IOS 6...);

- Product flexibility: it is adaptable to a variety of systems and environments (e.g. cloud, ADSL, laptop and PDA computers, virtual machines, etc.);

- Centralized network backup, that is, agent installation is not required, while competitive backup solutions require an agent to be installed. That means that Throne CNBS can do the backup through the network with no need for the software to be installed on each workstation and server;

- Backup is possible even when backup files are in use by the operating system;

- Central administration of servers and central control of the backup process regardless of the server geography; and

- Technical terms are in line with EU regulatory requirements for data protection and storage, that is, it is a legally relevant solution at affordable price.

If the data backup software of Throne Solutions is your favorite for the investment of the year, you can vote for this candidate at the official website - Aurea.