Industry: Manufacturing
Headquarters: USA
In numbers:
- Years in business: Over a century
- Locations: Multiple Environment
- Protecting data on-premises across SAP, Windows, and file servers at two locations
“Our experience with Commvault has been amazing. A 8X savings in the SAP backup landscape is delivering tremendous benefits – not to mention the agility it brings to our business initiatives. If Commvault is not one of your top two choices, I’d be surprised.”
Author
CIO
Challenges
- The company protects a snowballing amount of data and decades’ worth of irreplaceable drawings and engineering plans.
- The manufacturer operates in a tightly regulated industry, which effects how it may store its data.
- Three different systems covering its data brought complexity and cost that hindered its security stance.
Solutions
- Commvault Cloud is a unified platform to safeguard all its workloads, replacing three incumbent products.
- The AI-enabled platform covers the company’s risk, readiness, and recovery needs.
- The company gains a layered defense against ransomware beyond traditional anomaly detection.
- The team appreciates granularity, such as assigning policies on a per-server basis.
Results
- The company gains peace of mind that it’s preventing and minimizing the impact of any attacks.
- One cyber resilience platform reduces team management time.
- SAP backups complete 8X sooner – and no longer keep anyone up at night.
- Data refreshes are now down to under 12 hours, at least 3X faster.
- Commvault Cloud pays for itself in about 12 months – years sooner than the average IT payback.
COMPLEXITY, COST, AND CHAOS WITH NUMEROUS DATA SOLUTIONS
For an American manufacturer, cyber resilience is more than protecting data for day-to-day operations. It’s also about securing decades’ worth of irreplaceable drawings and engineering plans.
Protecting and managing its data and intellectual property has never been more challenging in the company’s long history. The company operates in a tightly regulated industry where every step in the production line must be carefully documented. Over time, its data footprint has ballooned through strategic initiatives and acquisitions, as have the number of solutions and time spent managing it.
The company accumulated three different systems to cover SAP, file servers, and Windows servers. Each system needed trained resources and continuous upgrades that cost the company sizeable investments each year, apart from the complexity that they brought.
Even with all that coverage, daily backups typically took at least 24 hours for SAP alone. On top of that, a lack of confidence in the process often led a team member to check on the status in the small hours of the night. Then, a standard data refresh could take up to four days.
“With every initiative, we have doubled the data size,” explains the CIO. “Our backups filled up the entire day, which slowed down our production process and the response time for everything else. It was hogging processing power, memory, and system resources.”
The company sought to consolidate its cyber resilience platform while fortifying its position against today’s biggest threats.
A SINGLE PANE OF GLASS
The IT and security teams are closely aligned at the manufacturer, leading to a collaborative approach to every decision, including the search for a new cyber resilience platform.
“We’re not doing this just for infrastructure or security,” explains the Sr. Manager of IT Infrastructure and Cybersecurity. “We’re doing this for the good of the company. It’s not about network or security. It’s about a secure network.”
The company contacted its partner, Winslow Technology Group, for help finding one solution to fit its entire tech stack and unique specs. They recommend using Commvault Cloud as a unified platform to safeguard all its workloads.
“Winslow Technology Group took our specific requirements and recommended Commvault Cloud to replace three incumbent products with one single-pane-of-glass solution,” says the CIO.
Commvault Cloud’s AI-enabled platform covers the company’s risk, readiness, and recovery needs. On top of all that, Commvault’s immutable data storage truly tipped the decision over the line.
“There are multiple layers of security built into CommVault’s tool set that provide extra protection in case of a cyber event. Features like immutable backups provide peace of mind to the Secure-Infrastructure team,” says the company’s Manager of SAP Basis.
8X FASTER BACKUPS, 3X QUICKER REFRESHES
Working together, the Commvault and Winslow teams deployed Commvault Cloud on-premises at the company’s primary physical locations, which cross-replicate daily between each other.
“Honestly, the rollout went smoothly,” says the Manager of SAP Basis. “The business didn’t even know.”
With Commvault Cloud, the team appreciates flexibility in assigning policies per server. For one server, they might choose to keep two versions or preserve hundreds for another server.
“That granularity in assigning policies on a per-server basis is phenomenal. It’s not all or nothing,” explains the Manager of SAP Basis.
The team quickly noticed a difference in peace of mind and resource demands. Daily SAP backups dropped from 24 hours to under three hours – and no longer keep anyone up at night.
“The biggest advantage is the reliability and quality of life for the individuals involved,” the CIO says. “They have confidence delegating to Commvault, knowing it will do the job. We don’t have to stay up worrying about backups. We can focus on other projects rather than on something that should be fluid in the background.”
“Our experience with Commvault has been amazing,” the CIO says. “A 8X savings in the SAP backup landscape is delivering tremendous benefits – not to mention the agility it brings to our business initiatives.”
Likewise, data refreshes are now about three times faster, down to under 12 hours.
Moreover, the company can rest assured that this solution combined with currently deployed security tools improves their cyber resilience.
PAYBACK IN ABOUT 12 MONTHS
Beyond team time savings, the enduring company reduces its power consumption and costs by consolidating three solutions.
“Moving to Commvault gives us a payback within about a year, and after that, it pays for itself repeatedly,” the CIO says. “A typical IT solution has a payback of three to five years.”
Adding up the cost-efficiency, team time savings, and high confidence in its protection measures, the CIO doesn’t hesitate to recommend it to peers searching for a cyber resilience solution.
“If Commvault is not one of your top two choices, I’d be surprised,” he says.
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