Nerds on Site, provider of both on-site and remote computer and IT support for businesses and homes across Gauteng and in Cape Town, follows a model of partnership and collaboration to bring customers best-of-breed solutions across the technology spectrum. In today’s world, data security is an integral part of this puzzle, so for the past five years, Nerds on Site has partnered with Data Management Professionals South Africa (DMP SA) to offer customers world-class data management and cloud-based backup with the CloudProtect solution. In January 2022, Nerds on Site, in partnership with DMP SA, added Metallic Data Management as a Service (DMaaS) to this basket, thus offering customers even more choices to access the best technology products on the market. 

Data is everything

“At Nerds on Site, we believe security should be a top IT priority, and at the heart of this lies your data. Data is your most important asset, whether you are running a business, studying, or simply have your life and memories digitised, so following best practice data protection is essential. With our solutions delivered in partnership with DMP SA, we can offer our customers the very best data backup and recovery for when the worst may unfortunately happen,” says Lourens Dormehl, Pod Leader at Nerds on Site.

These data backup, protection and management solutions give Nerds on Site customers peace of mind that their data is protected in the case of accidental deletion, malicious deletion, cyberattacks or any other data loss event. The service is proactively monitored and managed with daily reporting, and notifications are sent immediately if any alert is triggered. 

This cost-effective offering is ideal for Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) users as it allows them to focus on their business rather than Information Technology (IT). However, it is also ideal for home users and students who want to protect their precious data. 

When the worst happens

“Without the right backup in place, data loss events can be catastrophic. Partnering with DMP SA allows us to give our customers ultimate peace of mind, and we have many examples of instances where our data management solutions have saved the day,” says Dormehl. 

With the right backup solutions in place, recovering lost data is a fast and simple process that reduces stress for Nerds on Site customers and helps them get back to business (or life) as usual in the shortest possible time.

“We had one client who lost everything on their desktop, but with DMP SA backups we could restore this in a matter of minutes. We also had a student who accidentally overwrote her Masters thesis with a blank document, losing months of work, and we were able to sift through our backup versions to find the original file,” Dormehl adds. 

Conversely, a client of Nerds on Site who had their own backup system had three hard drives on a server fail simultaneously, which meant the RAID configuration also failed and they were unable to restore seamlessly. They had to wipe the drives and reinstall them without the log files, which meant that there were 25 images of the data that had to be sifted through and files restored manually. The process took two weeks, instead of the few hours that a DMP SA solution would have facilitated. 

Evolving partnerships

Nerds on Site originally approached DMP SA when they experienced backup failures on previous solutions and following testing of CloudProtect, found it worked perfectly for themand their clients’ needs. DMP SA provided full and ongoing training and updates to ensure that Nerds on Site are able to continue to offer their customers the best in data management. This is becoming increasingly important in light of rising incidents of ransomware and growing cyberthreats as well as increased requirements for data privacy and protection. 

“We also recently launched an online portal that allows Nerds on Site to purchase Metallic cloud-based data management solutions. This management portal makes it simpler for Nerds on Site to offer global leading data protection to their customers, augmented by our proactive monitoring and alerting features. With our service-based offerings, customers can pay as they consume and access enterprise-class software and solutions without capital expenditure,” says Pfarelo Sitsula, Inside Sales Representative at DMP SA.

“Our partnership with DMP SA ensures we receive ongoing training and regular communication, which for us is essential to relationship building and understanding our products. We look forward to continuing to grow together in the future and to offering more customers the very best in data management and data protection solutions,” Dormehl concludes.