CN Group selects iseek Communications for disaster recovery services as natural disasters take a toll on small to medium businesses (SMB)

CN Group, an IT  and cloud services provider, today said it had selected iseek Communications, an enterprise grade data centre provider, as its disaster recovery partner for small to medium customers following a series of natural disasters, including the floods in Queensland.

“Equipment you can easily replace, but data you can’t,” said Brian Pereira, CN Group’s Chief Executive Officer said.  “Many small businesses were housing their IT equipment in basements when the floods hit, and a lot of those customers lost everything.”

CN Group provides IT consulting, infrastructure management and cloud services for small, medium and large enterprises.  Mr Pereira said that the company was now experiencing strong interest from SMBs wanting to unlock the benefits of cloud and hosted infrastructure traditionally only available to big companies.

“The spate of natural disasters over the last couple of years has been an eye opener for SMBs all over Australia.  We had customers in Queensland with leaky roofs who lost everything overnight due to heavy rains. Worse, what they thought they had in terms of back-ups was also unusable or untested, putting their whole business at risk,” he said.

According to the Dept Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary, SMB’s make up 99% of the Australian businesses, with more than two million  small businesses employing 20 people or less. Yet most don’t have a back-up and recovery strategy, according to iseek Communication’s General Manager, Hugh Smith.

“SMBs, particularly those who may only need half a rack to run their IT systems, tend to be more reticent about data centre hosting and cloud-based services,” he said.  “However, recent events have started to shift attitudes, driving home the importance of having a disaster recovery strategy in place no matter how small your business is.”

Mr Pereira said: “SMBs are becoming increasingly more sophisticated about cloud offerings and the benefits of having their IT services hosted off-site, but too many are still putting their business at risk.”

CN Group chose iseek because of its modern, high density, secure facilities that are now ISO27001 accredited.  “iseek’s data centres are world-class, and with locations in both Sydney and Brisbane now, it suits our business model in terms of delivery and platform,” Mr Pereira said.

“From a value perspective, iseek is highly competitive which means we can pass on cost savings to our customers; and they offer diverse connectivity from the bigger carriers through to some of the more niche suppliers, which also gives us a great deal of flexibility.”