Smart Industry 1/2020

that needed to be protected at the
Williams’ factory. New backup jobs
would fail to start because the previous
backups were still running. The
backup window had grown too long.
Data recovery also presented a challenge,
said Hackland. Thanks to Acronis,
he maintained, Williams was
able to reduce its backup window
from days to minutes, accessing and
restoring any file, from any point of
time, literally at racing speed.
Even more importantly, the old backup
system was unable to protect the
team’s cloud workloads. “We needed
a data protection partner to help us
be more aggressive with our cloud
and make sure we always have a
spare copy of all our data,” Hackland
said. Not least because of compliance
issues: each team’s data must
be protected from cyberattacks and
archived in accordance with the regulations
of FIA, the governing body of
formula racing. The FIA may request
historical data at any time in the future
to verify the team’s actions, and
the team needs to hand over the data
within a specified time limit.
Beloussov now holds Singaporean
citizenship, the country where Acronis
was originally founded in 2003.
Most of his 1,500 people are scattered
around the world, many of them working
from home, and the Swiss headquarters
has only 25 present there
on a daily basis with others working
remotely. The number is scheduled to
grow considerably, though, following
the establishment of the Schaffhausen
Institute of Technology (SIT), an
international research-led institution
engaging in basic research in the fields
of artificial intelligence, quantum technologies,
and digital health, supported
by Acronis. “Students, academics,
and industry need a new model of
education for the challenges in today’s
hyper-connected, data-driven world.
SIT bridges the gap between education,
research and applications for industry,”
he says.
The race, it seems, isn’t just to the
swiftest, but also to the smartest.
Acronis Foundation
15 Years, 15 Schools
As a student, Serguei Beloussov
earned some extra cash giving lessons
in physics, so teaching has always
been part of his DNA. That is how he
explains why, to celebrate the 15th
anniversary of Acronis, he decided to
establish a foundation with the goal
of building 15 schools for children
in underserved communities in developing
countries from Tanzania to
Guatemala.
The latest, the Dong Na Kham School
in Southern Laos, was opened in late
2019, bringing the number to eight.
Two more in Nepal and Nicaragua are
scheduled to open this year.
Besides building schools, the Acronis
Cyber Foundation has put together
an “IT Skills Programme” aimed at increasing
the employability of former
felons by providing them with the job
skills they need to rebuild their lives.
Your data are
your life!
Serguei Beloussov
Founder and CEO,
Acronis AG
In addition, the foundation publishes
educational books for children, for instance
Acronis and the Quantum Computer,
a children’s guide to the nature
and behavior of matter and energy
on the atomic and subatomic level –
something most grown-ups still fail to
grasp.
source ©: Francesco Breck Brembati
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