Most IT managers are conscientious about backing up their company's servers, but few are as religious about backing up data on client PCs. In part, that's because backing up hundreds of PCs is a difficult task that can consume a great deal of network bandwidth. But the latest version of Connected Corp.'s TLM software may change the way IT executives think about the job.

Version 6.1 of the software makes it easy to schedule backup tasks at any time, and as often as desired. To keep backup tasks from hogging network resources, the software only backs up changes to files it's previously backed up. All data is compressed before back-up to further reduce the load on the network.

Telekurs Financial Information Ltd., a global financial-information provider based in Stamford, Conn., is installing the software next week to back up 200 PCs in the United States to high-availability servers at a Connected data center in Natick, Mass. The company, which is owned by Swiss banks, including Union Bank Of Switzerland and Credit Suisse, expects to then install the software on almost 2,000 more PCs at Telekurs offices around the world. Walter Beddoe, VP of operations, says the terrorist attacks last fall brought home the importance of backing up client-system data. Says Beddoe, "Before 9/11, we had no automated backup of PCs at all."