Bes-Be is a business unit of the GDF SUEZ Group that provides IT support to several of its subsidiaries. The main benefit? All IT services are totally uniform across 5000 end- users. This allows them to work more efficiently, smoothly and reliably. Countries in which these end-users are located include: Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Canada, Dubai …

Centralised back-ups

Stijn Van Malder: “The data from all of the companies we support converge in the Bes-Be datacentre in Brussels. We perform centralised back-ups of these data on a daily basis. For the external, off-site archiving of these fifty tapes – which can hold between 25 and 45 terabytes of information – Merak plays a crucial role. It picks them up once a week and delivers the new set of tapes for the next series of back-ups – strictly according to what was agreed upon.”

Strict confidentiality

“It’s not possible for just anyone to access the information on the tapes straightaway. But confidentiality is still a crucial point for attention: these data must not fall into the wrong hands. The good news is that, when it comes to confidentiality, we have nothing to fear with Merak. They are unrelenting –and rightly so. There was an instance in which their courier arrived with a delivery of tapes, but the person in charge wasn’t there to accept delivery. So they called me, at which point I had to fax them my signed and authorised approval before the courier would hand over the tapes. It’s good to know that our data are perfectly safe in Merak’s hands.”