South Africa’s Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) has selected Autonomy's intelligent mobile backup solution, Connected Backup, to protect vital information across the group.

TNPA is one of five operating divisions of Transnet SOC Ltd, a state-owned enterprise in South Africa, responsible for the national port system. It provides port infrastructure and marine services at all eight commercial seaports in South Africa and is the biggest port authority on the African continent in terms of the cargo volumes it handles.

TNPA selected Autonomy's Connected Backup solution from local Autonomy Data Protection partner, Altonet, to enable intelligent, automated and secure backup for more than 1,800 laptops and desktops across all eight of its port sites.

Autonomy Connected Backup automatically and securely saves vital data in the background while users work. It backs up incremental changes in data and new documents, reducing the time, size and complexity of backups.

According to TNPA, Connected Backup stood out in the selection process for its proven scalability and single-platform approach, as well as its unique deduplication and email optimization capabilities when backing up local Microsoft Outlook PST files..

"Autonomy Connected Backup lets us keep our critical information safe, helping to preserve productivity where previously we would have faced data loss," said Ian Du Preez, senior manager, Enterprise Architecture, TNPA.

"As a logistics-driven organisation, time is of the essence. We can't afford to waste time from files being lost, and Autonomy's solution gives us short, efficient, centrally managed backups that don't occupy our users and provide a robust set of tools and rich functions to recover data."

Prior to selecting Autonomy Connected Backup, TNPA's users were required to manually save their valuable data, an inefficient and unreliable process that presents risk of data loss if laptops are lost, hard drives fail, or a user inadvertently deletes a file. Connected Backup also offers extended capabilities for eDiscovery and data analytics with Connected Classify and Collect.

This is offered on the same single platform, and would support TNPA for vital compliance and reporting functions. The ability to easily extend the deployment of Autonomy's technology in this way was another key reason TNPA selected the solution.