Stemcor Holdings Limited is the world's largest independent steel trader. Formed in 1951, it has grown to become the fourth largest private company in the United Kingdom, with an annual turnover exceeding £5bn and a trading volume of more than 20 million metric tons a year. As well as trading and shipping steel and raw materials, Stemcor provides marketing, finance and logistics services to the global steel industry, and it was one of the industry's pioneers in online steel trading systems. The company operates in 45 countries.

As a global company with many disparate offices, one of Stemcor's key IT challenges is improving and accelerating the flow of information around the business. Its ability to identify and realise opportunities across the 45 countries in which it operates depends on close collaboration between employees, which in turn relies on highly available, accurate data. The backup solution is therefore the backbone of an infrastructure built on availability, resilience and fast recovery times for terabytes of business-critical data.

Stemcor had looked for the best option on the market when it first sought an online backup solution, but the results did not satisfy the IT team. The technology in place was considered top of its class, yet the cost of growing the storage footprint was prohibitive. As a result, only 10 of Stemcor's sites were being backed up, leaving most of its global trading locations outside the managed backup structure.

"We had been using what we considered as top breed technology to back up our critical data, however we were limited to backing up only 10 of our sites as the costs for growing our storage footprint was incredibly prohibitive," said Steve Burkett, Network Administrator at Stemcor Holdings.

Stemcor chose Databarracks, a UK provider of Backup as a Service and disaster recovery services, to protect business-critical data spread across four continents. After only two months, 25 of Stemcor's trading locations had their data automatically backed up to Databarracks' data centre, more than double the number of sites covered under the previous arrangement.

Although the service uses the same underlying technology as Stemcor's previous managed service provider, Databarracks deployed a complete backup structure that allows the whole information lifecycle of Stemcor's data to be managed. The service includes 24/7 technical support, assisted configuration of systems and local storage copies for fast restores, with no extra charges for restorations, support assistance or software updates.

Databarracks delivers its data and continuity services from data centres 30 metres below ground in ex-military nuclear bunkers, supported 24/7/365 by its own team of specialists. For Stemcor, the provider's level of service and knowledge of its product capabilities, rather than the technology alone, were pivotal in the decision, and the deal was cheaper than the previous solution while covering twice as many sites.

• 25 global trading locations automatically backed up within two months, up from 10 sites previously
• Double the number of sites protected for a cheaper deal than the previous provider
• No extra charges for restorations, support assistance or software updates
• 24/7 technical support, assisted configuration of systems and local storage copies for fast restores
• Complete backup structure managing the whole information lifecycle of terabytes of business-critical data