Mémoire Vive is a B2B and B2C IT service provider, reseller and approved Apple repair operator. A total of 17 computer experts accompany SMEs based in Western Switzerland in a number of sectors, providing them with the servers, networks and workstations (PC or Mac) they need. With teleworking becoming more widespread, more and more companies are ready to take the next step into the cloud. Mémoire Vive is adapting its offer to this increased demand for remote services. At the heart of the solution is the data backup system, provided by Swiss Backup from Infomaniak.

“We need to provide our customers with the most suitable solutions in terms of power and service availability while maintaining a certain rationality in terms of costs. With Infomaniak, these requirements are met in full.” Gionatan Di Stefano, CTO of Mémoire Vive

Mémoire Vive: providing tailor-made IT services

From left to right, Donato Mottini (former CEO of Mémoire Vive), Gionatan Di Stefano (CTO) and Malorie Molina (Executive Assistant).

The firm accompanies SMEs throughout Western Switzerland in their choice of servers, workstations, network and specialist solutions, such as those provided by Infomaniak as well as Synology, Swisscom, etc. The particularity of Mémoire Vive is that it focuses the majority of its IT solutions on services and not solely on the sale of equipment. In addition to providing a rental service, it handles installation, maintenance and assistance as well as organising personalised training courses.

“Providing the customer with the service we would hope to receive ourselves.”

The Mémoire Vive team works in the field and is in close contact with hundreds of SMEs in Westerns Switzerland, year after year. Among the constraints observed among customers, access to cloud solutions that are both efficient and sovereign is a recurrent problem :

“We are witnessing an increase in demand for the new generation of cloud services, on condition that they are based entirely in Switzerland. It is therefore important for us to work with a service provider such as Infomaniak, which guarantees that data remains under Swiss jurisdiction at all times.”

Off-site backup: a question of performance and trust

“Backing up data is always a major responsibility because, in the event of a problem, the survival of companies depends on it. For a number of years, Mémoire Vive has provided a solution based on Synology, primarily used to back up servers. However, while it was necessary to be able to respond to the rapidly changing market, the publisher of its solution, based in Switzerland, was planning on abandoning the project. Teleworking, an increasing number of peripherals, virtual workstations… the changes also result in a simplification of IT tasks with the advent of cloud tools. A backup solution must be able to keep step with these changes.

Trust is the other pillar. It is essential to be able to guarantee the security, integrity, accessibility and sovereignty of data. The backdrop of cyber threats is becoming darker and darker, a fact that is amply reported in the daily news. Ultimately, all these issues taken together severely limit the potential solutions.”

The challenge

  • To develop the off-site backup service offer with a cloud solution (performance) guaranteeing data sovereignty and security (trust).
  • To propose a scalable solution capable of being deployed on a large scale with adjustments on the fly.
  • To respond to the specific needs of the organisations in terms of protection against ransomeware and cryptolocking.

Why choose Swiss Backup from Infomaniak?

“Infomaniak already benefits from a very high level of trust among the companies with which we deal. It is present with our customers with web hostings, the Email Service, the domain names and now kDrive. As an Infomaniak partner, this is important to us as our main concern is reliability in the long run.

Swiss Backup has all the advantages of a complete ready-to-use solution, combined with the Infomaniak guarantees of sovereignty and security. The simplicity of the system means that it can be deployed on a large scale within the framework of our audits. That is really what we expect of a modern specialist backup solution:”

  • increased storage space on the fly
  • the addition of peripherals
  • encryption with your own “zero knowledge” key
  • redundant backup on 3 media at all times
  • localisation of data centers in Switzerland

The Acronis software provided with Swiss Backup makes it possible to automate tasks and thus reduce costs. It also provides advantages in terms of security:

  • detection of ransomware
  • monitoring of antivirus updates
  • monitoring of system updates
  • possibility of taking remote control of workstations
  • Swiss Backup already secures the data of Mémoire Vive customers

“We have tested the versatility and reliability of Swiss Backup on a large scale. While we primarily use it to back up servers, we chosen three different use cases to evaluate its capacities in the field. And we are not disappointed!”

More than 100 TB of cloud archiving space for the video production agency Messieurs.ch

“Swiss Backup provides us with guarantees that we would not be able to implement. With our data volumes, we would have had to deploy a profusion of resources, in a way becoming a host ourselves. Upgrading our archiving infrastructure would have seen costs skyrocket. “ Richard Ammann, Head of Operations at Messieurs.ch

The Messieurs agency is one of Mémoire Vive’s customers and among the most sought-after video production agencies in Switzerland. It creates films for prestigious watchmaking companies and for a wide range of advertisers: public authorities, media, players in the Swiss tech sector, etc. With films shot in higher resolution than 4K, the agency’s accumulated video files represent a massive weight, and the volume is constantly growing.

Our work flows (video production) oblige us to install servers on our premises which are copied in our data centers. At the same time, an increasing quantity of our data concerns archiving. A dedicated infrastructure was required with a freely available volume of storage space which was ultimately not used. With this issue compounded by the increasing threat of cyber attacks, this infrastructure had reached its limits.

In the news, we witnessed cyber attacks on public authorities and realised that we wanted to outsource the process of backing up our archives to Infomaniak. These archives are now constantly copied onto three media in different data centers in Switzerland with Swiss Backup.”

“The Infomaniak work ethic corresponds in every aspect to our desire to work with local service providers. Infomaniak is a guarantee of a serious approach that we are looking for and of principles that we share.”

Aubep: backup of servers for more than 100 customers

Mémoire Vive also manages the IT of the company Aubep, near Yverdon. With its ERP /XRP company management solution developed in collaboration with the EPFL, Aubep is present in the systems of a hundred companies. Aubep used a backup solution developed internally using free tools, but this proved to be too fragile. Be it for on-premise, cloud or hybrid infrastructures, they are now all backed up using Swiss Backup from Infomaniak.

“Once again, Swiss Backup has proven its capacity to handle a wide range of configurations. It provides unrivalled security and serves to simplify management by centralising all backups. Mémoire Vive also uses Swiss Backup to secure the Linux servers of Aubep.” Gionatan Di Stefano

Mémoire Vive now recommends Swiss Backup for all its backup plans

As these situations show, Swiss Backup is relevant in most data backup solutions. The Mémoire Vive team increasingly suggests this tool to its customers during its audits. “We do not want to reinvent the wheel. Swiss Backup is a specialist solution, so we take advantage of this. The Acronis tool also enables to automate certain tasks, which is more economical for the customers. ”

A flexible solution perfectly adapted to SMEs

Mémoire vive incorporates Swiss Backup in SMEs of very different sizes, ranging from 3-4 users to more than 50, with storage volumes of between 200 GB and 20 TB per person. The solution secures NAS, macOS, Windows and Linux servers as well as virtual machines. Customers include, for example, law firms, notary offices, architects offices, etc.

The particularities of Infomaniak

How did implementation and collaboration with the Infomaniak team go?

Swiss Backup is an intuitive solution and in the rare cases where we needed help, the excellent FAQs were always available to guide us in how to use it correctly. From time to time, we also contact the support team in the event of errors.

Otherwise, the first thing that springs to mind is attentiveness. The team is attentive to the needs of both the market and the customers, which is actually very pleasing. We know that if something is requested because it is important, the team will make every effort to develop the market.

What improvements could be made?

Because Swiss Backup plays an increasingly important role in our offer, we are keen to have the possibility of accumulating several backups/servers on a single management console. This would enable us to maintain a global view and to manage customers’ backups more efficiently.

How important are environmentally-friendly services to you?

Being “green” is not simply a fashion statement for us. It is clearly something we have strived towards for a number of decades now. With our rental contracts, we offer to take the IT equipment back at the end of the contract to recondition it and thus extend its life cycle. Apple also encourages us in our approach by using green energy. Reducing the number of physical servers on our sites and switching to the Infomaniak Public Cloud is also in line with this approach. We know that this will also reduce the impact of our electricity consumption, for example, all the more so as Infomaniak only uses renewable energies and operates its servers for up to 15 years.

You mentioned the launch of Infomaniak’s Public Cloud? What are your impressions of this experience?

It is still a little early to provide complete feedback. We are very interested and we have already begun migrating our applications to it, such as the 3CX telephone servers. We are continuing to explore it, preparing the helpdesk servers and their wiki. We have numerous projects for the future.

Swiss Backup is changing for companies and organisations

“Swiss Backup is a booming service, and there is therefore huge incentive for us to develop it. Corporate demand to backup company data is increasing considerably and we are very attentive to the needs of our customers to ensure our product evolves accordingly. In addition to this, Swiss Backup should be increasingly used in the future, as we are preparing a function which will make it possible to manage an entire IT park via a single account, using the Acronis software.” Cédric Aguettaz, Developer at Infomaniak

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