Automated data backups with Zero investment in storage

Customer description

A leading institute recognized for its excellence in disciplines such as engineering, management, science, commerce, arts, law and research studies.

The challenge

1. Inefficient manual data backups

Prior to adopting BluVault, the institution did not have a commercial-grade backup solution in place.  They had relied on a manual process that involved end-users using flash drives to back up data on their endpoints.  Even critically important departments in the institute like Marketing, Finance, and HR were using this arrangement to protect their student management files, documents, and business intelligence data. The IT team realized that this process offered very low reliability, and the situation was reaching a point where their ability to recover data was becoming more and more questionable each passing day.  As the volume of data grew with time, so did the frequency of data losses, and the subsequent rate of failures in trying to recover such data.

They needed a data protection strategy that could keep pace with the rapid and continuous digitization of processes the institution had committed to.

2. High dependencies on IT support and end-users

The manual backup process imposed additional obligations on the employees and faculty. In addition to their other responsibilities, they also had to remember to perform periodic backups of their systems. Failure rates were high – which meant the IT team had to get involved way more often than they would have liked. The employees were spread out geographically and worked different hours – which meant that much extra stress on an already understaffed IT team. The manual process required following up, managing, and ensuring that backups were done on time each day. Incomplete data backups meant a ticking time-bomb until somebody needed to restore something.

3. Little or no visibility on backups and restores

In absence of a standardized backup and recovery platform, the IT team had very low visibility on backup success ratios. It was simply impractical to track and report on hundreds of manual backups performed on USB drives by several individuals. Without reliable reporting, monitoring, or tracking, the institution’s IT team were flying blind. They needed a solution that could provide protection to critical data, minimize the time involved, and offer a centralized platform that would give visibility and insight into all data backup and restore activities.

4. Extra expenses on storage infrastructure

While the institution’s IT Team recognized the benefits a centralized, commercial-grade solution would bring, they also feared that with ever increasing data volumes and longer retention requirements, they would need a massive storage and infrastructure investment. They were worried that they would be trading off the complexity of their existing process only to be saddled with prohibitively high costs.

The Parablu Fix

After careful consideration of the organization’s existing infrastructure and backup processes, Parablu recommended their signature data backup and protection solution – BluVault for Endpoints. Apart from BluVault’s acclaimed data protection features, the solution offered a unique capability to let the institute leverage their existing OneDrive for Business storage as a backup target.

BluVault for Endpoint Backups was perfect for the institution, as it offered:

• Automated data backups from their critical endpoints. This eliminated the need to depend on end-users to run their own backups.
• The benefit of ZERO investment in any storage – either in the cloud or on-premise.  Parablu’s ability to use the institution’s existing OneDrive for Business storage allocations was  a game-changer.
• Reliable data restores in the event of any data loss scenarios.
• Cost-sensitive features such as data deduplication, compression incrementals forever, and network bandwidth throttling.
• Enhanced data security with industrial strength encryption and zero-knowledge privacy features that ensured that their critical data was safe from possible exfiltration or losses.

Why Parablu?

The institution, after a thorough evaluation of several available backup solutions, decided to go with Parablu’s BluVault for several reasons:

• Comprehensive automated data backup from endpoints
• ZERO investment on storage – either on the cloud or on-premise
• Utilization of existing OneDrive storage
• Rapid rollout without any complexities and compatibility problems
• Worked seamlessly with their existing IT infrastructure
• Quick backups, Reliable Restores.
• Centralized management, reporting and auditing of all backed up data
• Elasticity and scalability for their growing needs

How the institution has benefited from BluVault for Endpoints

1. Automated backup to cloud storage

With BluVault, this institution has now simplified the backup and restore process for all departments. The IT team doesn’t need to depend on end-users for backups.  They now use powerful backup policies from the Parablu console to tailor how backups should behave for different users and departments.  They have gained confidence in the knowledge that their data is safely backed up in their OneDrive for Business accounts and is available for restores anytime.  Even with ever-shortening backup windows, and ever-increasing data volumes, the institution now feels prepared for the future.

2. A single solution that eliminated several points of failure

With manual backups, the institution was relying completely on users, and portable storage tools like flash drives which were prone to theft, loss, physical damage, and corruption. With automated endpoint data backups, accompanied by advanced data security and protection features, they have now eliminated multiple points of failures that could put data availability and integrity at risk.

 3. Lower implementation costs and higher flexibility

With the implementation of a modern data backup and recovery solution that offered centralized monitoring and administration features, this institute has drastically reduced their data management and protection costs. Not only did BluVault require ZERO investment in storage infrastructure, it also enabled smart delta-incremental backups, compression and at-source deduplication that further reduced costs related to network and storage capacity requirements.

 4. Protection from external and internal threats

Apart from automated and comprehensive data backups, they now also have a mechanism in place that assures them of data immutability and protection from insider attacks and ransomware. With BluVault’s ability to do point-in-time restores, the institute can simply “roll back the clock” from before a ransomware attack and get their data back as it was.

5. World-class product support

Apart from the solution itself, this institution, like all other Parablu customers has the access to a world-class tech support team.  The Parablu support team walked with them through the journey all the way from a product trial, through deployment, training, and is still available even for the smallest question the IT team may have.

What customer says