Enterprise Laptop Backup for an IT Services Company
Use cases:
- Continuous backup of executive laptops (roaming)
- Synchronization of some executive laptops with desktops in office
- Data consolidation to internal data center (using Disaster Recovery feature)
- Sharing over Web (selective) with partners and clients
A globally renowned IT services and product engineering company is using Vaultize to backup and sync executive laptops (including Outlook PSTs). Executive laptops store business critical data, which is crucial not only for day-to-day operations but also for legal compliance. If the data is lost, it could take weeks to rebuild. Since the executives are often mobile, backing up the data systematically through the traditional on-premise backup solution (and VPN) is a challenge – practically, the laptops don’t get backed up at all!
Prior to Vaultize:
The company had an on-premise laptop backup solution at multiple office locations. This solution had the provision of backing up laptops over VPN while roaming. But this required a conscious effort from the users to connect to the office network and that too just for backup – too much to expect from busy executives! And this, when otherwise, in today’s mobile world, you are hardly required to connect to office network – you get your emails on smartphones through push.
Other problems faced:
- Many times, restores turned out to be stale!
- Centralized administration through a single console was not possible (for multiple locations)
- Data consolidation not under company control
Now with Vaultize:
- Vaultize administrator of the company is able to view the status on a single dashboard to ensure if the backups are happening correctly on all executive laptops
- Vaultize updates/upgrades are pushed through AD
- Vaultize is working silently without consuming much of resources (including networking bandwidth) because of smart de-duplication – particularly useful for roaming executives
- Data is consolidated in their data center
Leading Insurance and Wealth Management Company
Use cases:
- Continuous backup of executive and manager laptops
- Backup of important data on other employees’ desktops
- Disaster recovery for critical servers
- Content consolidation of roaming data to headquarters (using DR feature)
- FTP replacement (using Sharing over Web feature)
- Internal sharing (using Group Sync feature)
The company has 7 offices across the world and plans to diversify geographically year over year. Most of the employees are on the move and use laptops (and smartphones). Additionally, a lot of critical data resides on office servers that include file servers, financial applications and portfolio management applications at each geographical location.
Prior to Vaultize:
- In-house LAN-based backup solution deployed for file servers at only a few locations
- Application databases were being backed up on weekly basis, and in an ad-hoc manner
- Backups of file servers and applications were being sent to headquarter on tapes/DVDs every week for DR
Now with Vaultize:
- All laptops have Vaultize installed. Many of the employees use synchronization feature to keep the folders sync between their office desktops and laptops
- File servers and application databases are being replicated to HQ using Vaultize’s DR feature. HQ’s data is also being replicated to one of the branch offices
- Portfolios and recommendations data are being made available to customers using the sharing over web feature – securely and while maintaining their privacy
- Research team is actively using Group Sync feature for internal sharing
Consumer Goods Dealer Network
Use cases:
- “Remote controlled” backup of dealer network
- Centralized management and monitoring
- Enforcement of policies
- Disaster recovery of certain data
- Content consolidation to company HQ
The customer is a leading Indian consumer goods company having a network of over a thousand dealers. The dealer management software running on MS-SQL databases is installed at each dealer location. The backup is being taken on DVDs and USB drives – manually! The challenge is to manage the backups, particularly the restore, because the dealers are not IT literate. If anything goes wrong an IT person has to travel from headquarter to dealer location to fix the issue.
Vaultize is being considered as an option for online backup and consolidation of all dealer data to the companies data center located at its headquarters. Through Vaultize’s centralized administration, the headquarter will be able to ensure regular backups and easy restores.
Architect Firm
Use cases:
- Online backup of designs and client data
- Replacement of FTP and email attachments (using Sharing over Web feature)
- Internal sharing of files (using Group Sync feature)
The customer is a leading architectural consultancy firm with 50 years in the field and having its clients located all around the world. They employ over 50 architects. They claim that they have digitally archived each and every drawing created in last 50 years!
Prior to Vaultize two file servers were being used as central repositories of drawings. All drawings of size less than a couple of MBs were being exchanged over emails and those bigger in size were shared through FTP/email. From inception to finalization, the drawing would go through 5 to 10 reviews. This would result in large-sized mailboxes, resulting in loss of productivity due to issues of slow Outlook load times, and also wastage of resources due to unnecessary bandwidth and storage consumption.
Now with Vaultize all the data is backed up and archived in the cloud and all the drawings are being sent to clients through web-based sharing. This has dramatically reduced the growth of their Outlook folders, which are now easy to manage and search. They are also using value-added services – Vaultize IT Manager.
Structural Engineering Firm
Use cases:
- Online backup of desktops and laptops
- Disaster recovery of some servers to another country
- Synchronization between laptops and desktops
- Replacement for FTP and email attachments to clients (using Sharing over Web feature)
- Internal sharing (less email attachments using Group Sync feature)
A structural engineering firm located in four offices across two countries with time zone difference of 5-6 hours and employing over 100 engineers working collaboratively for serving the clients world-wide.
Without Vaultize all four offices maintained different file servers backed locally and without any DR plan. For collaboration, teams located in the eastern part of the world would upload the structural designs to the servers at office in western country through FTP (and many times as email attachments) and then have teleconferencing at the end of the day. Based on the discussions in teleconference the other team would make changes to drawings and again upload on first team’s server. A lot of productive time would get wasted in just setting up and transferring the data manually.
Now with Vaultize, all office workstations, laptops and servers are backed up in the cloud. File servers at all four locations are now set up in DR and synchronization mode. Teams are actively using Group Sync feature to share data internally. All drafts and drawings are delivered to clients through password protected web access.
Media and Print Services Company
Use cases:
- Sharing over Web (FTP replacement)
A leading media and print services company, with clients all over the world, currently manages 30 TB of data in the form of large-sized and very high resolution images/movies (each hundreds of MBs or GB in size). All these images are cataloged and archived locally using a catalog management software and on DVDs. The company already has a LAN-based backup and DR solution deployed.
The challenge is to provide their customers secure online access to images/movies for tracking and reviewing the work in progress. Email attachments don’t work for them because even lower resolution images are quite large, and FTP also is a technical challenge for their customers.
The company is planning to use Vaultize as a online repository where images in low resolution are kept for short term to be picked up by the respective clients after having given a password and a link by email. Since the images are low resolution, clients can only review the progress but not use them. And when these images change, clients can see the changes immediately.
