How Cloud Backup is Used by Spectrum, XcellHost, Alto, Dorégrill, and Liberty Group: Case Studies

Amid increasing cyberattacks, it has become vital companies of all sizes to secure their data over the cloud. Cloud backup has an advantage over physical storage systems: device independence, greater encryption, minimum human intervention, and protection from third-party malware.

See below how five organizations benefited from cloud backup options in different sectors: communication, manufacturing, data protection, fintech, and insurance:

1. Spectrum

Spectrum is a U.S.-based TV and internet service provider that works by delivering huge chunks of on-demand media content every hour.

Spectrum uses Commvault’s cloud backup system to reduce bandwidth errors, and network lags, so the audience can enjoy their favorite shows at the right time.

“We needed a provider that allows us to take a tiered approach to replicate content to our regional sites, which ensures we can meet customer demand for popular content,” said Justin Slaughter from Spectrum. “To avoid network latency issues and safeguard the customer experience, we wanted to replace our decentralized model for pushing content to our local sites with a more efficient approach.

“We can deliver large volumes of content reliably within our targeted four-hour time frame.”

Industry: Communication

Cloud backup provider: Commvault and Commvault ContinuousDataReplicator (CDR)

Outcomes:

• To store personalized content for viewers in advance based on their past choices
• Storing, managing, and delivering previously watched content across seven regional sites from a central location 
• Creating a hub-and-spoke model for multimedia content to stay glitch-free in peak hours
• Local and rapid replication of content as heavy as 30 terabytes leads to upstream demand reduction and higher efficiency with limited resources

2. XcellHost

Xcell hosts more than 25 data centers distributed globally and has built a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for customers to secure their data.

Previously, Xcell had to manage client data across three different infrastructures, virtual, physical, and cloud, so even if one of them fails, the other modes can be protected. However, the distributed setup decreased data visibility for clients, and the compilation time, along with resources, shot up exponentially.

“Having a cloud backup provider has greatly improved our customer satisfaction. The feedback has been great,” said Xcell Host’s managing director Samir Jhaveri. “Recently, a customer suffered a ransomware attack, and it took us only a few minutes to restore their files. It helps us grow our business.”

Industry: Data protection

Cloud backup provider: Acronis Cyber Cloud platform and Acronis Active Protection

Outcomes:

• 50% increase in data protection efficiency and reduction in backup time
• Operate data in multiple data centers (around 25 and counting) from a single location, in turn building a unified backup infrastructure
• Manage workload across virtual, physical, and cloud infrastructure to construct application-aware backups
• Automating restoration tasks and ensuring service-level agreement (SLA) compliance to clients
• Better protection from ransomware with self-service capabilities and increased data visibility through Acronis Active Protection

3. Alto

Indonesia-based Alto secures payment transactions by connecting local ATMs with electronic data capture (EDC) machines across the country. Today, Alto’s infrastructure spans across 25 million monthly transactions, 100,000+ ATMs and 1,000,000+ EDCs, thus creating a complex payment system.

Alto has recently entered into the digital scenario and has faced frequent downturns ever since with its virtual machines (VMs). The restore times were significant, given the number of financial transactions across the system. To cope, Alto needed a cloud backup solution offering automatic backups and low downtime with lean teams.

“Manually backing up our data was inefficient, but the larger concern for the business was how long it took to restore our VMs,” said Hendri Desungku Wuntoro, manager at PT Alto. “If one of our systems experienced an issue, this manual approach made it difficult and time-consuming, as it could take as long as five hours to rebuild it from scratch, which was a significant source of business risk.

“To solve that challenge, we looked for a fresh approach. We can now orchestrate all our backups from a single point of control—cutting our management activities from three hours to just five minutes per day.”

Industry: Fintech

Cloud backup provider: Veeam Availability Suite and Veeam ONE

Outcomes:

• Ensuring data availability even if the centralized servers are down or under attack
• Protection across 300 VMs to restore and backup as and when the need arises
• Easy restoration every time a VM is down with just a few clicks in prod servers
• Reduction in operational costs, as no additional hardware is needed to create physical backups
• Stronger data protection compliance through a 5x backup speed
• 83% drop in backup management

4. Dorégrill 

Dorégrill designs and manufactures rotisserie ovens for an American and French audience. Every year, Dorégrill generates 3TB of data with a 15–20% year-over-year growth. The company’s existing system uses manual backup options like hard disks to store weekly data.

With an announcement to go fully remote last year, Dorégrill needed a more robust cloud backup system to handle not only client but also employee data and potential future roadmaps.

“The lockdown spotlighted the limitations of our backup system and forced us into drastic modernization,” said Paul Bertho, export manager at Dorégrill. “We are delighted now to be able to install a modern system that consolidates our existing infrastructure. It gives us great peace of mind to deal with the ever-increasing ransomware threat.”

Industry: Manufacturing

Cloud backup provider: Arcserve OneSystem, OneXafe Solo, and Késys Ouest

Outcomes:

• Creating a plug-and-protect system for data backup that anyone can operate without going into the technical know-how
• Updated disaster recovery infrastructure with fire alarms and fault hardware integrations
• Localizing NAS efforts for the manufacturing company with an extended capacity of 24TB
• Centralized cloud management controlling regional data storage systems

5. Liberty Group

Johannesburg-based Liberty Group manages around 80,000 customers, 87% of Fortune 500s, 500TB of data, and 800 data sources on a usual basis. The group uses the tape-based infrastructure for client data retention, especially financial data. However, the process was deemed highly resource intensive and time-consuming and came with slow restoration every time a backup device was down.

Liberty Group used Veritas to create virtual cloud backup for long-term storage and even replicating backups to AWS cloud as soon the data time hits one year or more.

“We’ve realized that moving to the cloud would enable Liberty to more easily adapt to changing customer needs. So, we are looking to shift to cloud-native applications wherever we can,” said Jayson Martin, head of IT data storage at Liberty Group. “Utilizing different elements of cloud backups platform strengthens our data protection while increasing our staff efficiency and, ultimately, enables our business’s digital transformation.

“Without NetBackup, we could not have fully recovered on any timeline, which would have caused significant problems for our business. But, we could completely recover from the attack in just six hours because we had all the data in Veritas NetBackup.”

Industry: Insurance

Cloud backup provider: Veritas NetBackup and Veritas InfoScale

Outcomes:

• Efficient storage virtualization and better backup monitoring
• Automated data backup and protection with a 50% reduction in staff time
• Liberty Group has managed to save more than 900,000 brands annually by disposing of the tape or vault-based backup approach
• Hassle-free writing and integration to the cloud without switching from the existing data protection pipeline
• Creating built-in deduplication to reduce storage and bandwidth issues