Why Bother With Backup? Three Enterprises Discuss the Benefits of Instant File Recovery with Cloud File Services

Three very different global companies. Three different industries. One common basic challenge – file backup.

The traditional way of protecting enterprise files has become expensive, difficult to manage, and unreliable. At these companies, the cost of maintaining data protection – backup licenses, replication to additional sites – was skyrocketing. In some cases, small or remote offices didn’t even have proper file data protection.

The trouble with file backup wasn’t necessarily the prime driver behind these companies moving to a cloud model for file storage with Nasuni. Some had a cloud-first initiative. Others were focused on reducing costs, improving global collaboration, or integrating newly acquired companies. But with all three enterprises, it quickly became apparent that eliminating traditional file backup in favor of continuous versioning to the cloud would be transformative.

But don’t take it from me. Our latest case studies capture the stories in their own words.

“We no longer have to run around with tapes” – Cheil Worldwide

The global marketing agency Cheil Worldwide is best known as the firm of choice for Samsung. Cheil has 53 offices on five continents, and the firm identified Nasuni as a way to manage its growing file data more effectively, consolidate islands of storage across the globe under one cloud-based global file system, and simplify management of file infrastructure worldwide. Nasuni also alleviated its backup pain.

The IT team in London manages 32 offices across Europe and Africa – and many of these sites were still relying on tapes for file data protection. Nasuni immediately changed that. Nasuni Continuous File Versioning® maintains a complete, versioned history of every file in the cloud. As files are written or changed, these deltas are securely propagated to the cloud, updating the authoritative “gold” copy of the file. This new approach to data protection eliminates the need for additional file backup, tapes, or disaster recovery and business continuity solutions. Instead, all sites enjoy instant file recovery.

“We no longer have to run around with tapes,” says Michael Goral, EHQ IT Operations Manager at Cheil Worldwide. “We have clear recovery points. We have a clear DR scenario. Each office can do down and we can replicate that data in another office. This is something that has not existed at Cheil until today.”

“We have no file backup anymore because of Nasuni” – AIXTRON SE

AIXTRON SE is a leading provider of deposition equipment to the semiconductor industry. Its technology solutions are used by customers worldwide to build advanced electronic or optoelectronic components that are used in a broad range of innovative applications, technologies and industries, including critical components in consumer electronics goods. As one of the first steps in the manufacturing process, AIXTRON has to operate quickly and efficiently – otherwise its clients and partners won’t be able to produce components on schedule. The firm sought out Nasuni to accelerate its global manufacturing workflows in part because Nasuni’s global file system has demonstrated tremendous success in this area with other large companies.

But AIXTRON also had a backup problem. The firm’s 8 main locations had their own storage infrastructure, and all of this storage had to be backed up – and restored quickly if something went wrong. Sites in Asia were backing up files to digital disks, then pushing this data back to Germany over the weekend, where it would be stored on tapes. Needless to say, this did not lend itself to fast recoveries.

“The backup and DR management was done by the German team because the offices in China or Tokyo or Taiwan didn’t have the resources who could manage that,” explains AIXTRON CIO Olaf Rupprecht. “With the implementation and deployment of Nasuni we got rid of this whole centralized backup solution. We have no file backup anymore because of Nasuni’s integrated data protection.”

“If it’s on Nasuni, I don’t have to back it up” – Meredith Corporation

After its acquisition of Time, Inc., Meredith Corporation deployed Nasuni as a way to integrate its new properties and users. The company stewards some of the most revered brands in the magazine industry – including People, Better Homes & Gardens, and InStyle. With creative, editorial, and production teams based in different regions, file data was growing across the company – especially Adobe Creative files – and collaboration had become a major challenge. Sharing these large files between offices stretched the limits of the firm’s previous infrastructure.

Nasuni has accelerated collaboration across the company, consolidating silos of storage into one file system, and reducing costs. And as with AIXTRON and Cheil Worldwide, eliminating backup in favor of instant file recovery has had an enormous impact.

“If it’s on Nasuni, I don’t have to back it up,” says David Coffman, Director of Enterprise Infrastructure at Meredith Corporation. “So that saves us. We used to have NetApp servers, and NetApp backup in the form of replication. With Nasuni we no longer need to have that redundant storage and purchase and maintain twice the capacity.”

“The perfect solution to get rid of the fear of ransomware” – AIXTRON SE

The Continuous File Versioning model of data protection also offers fast recoveries from ransomware because the complete versioned history of each file is stored in the cloud. Recent versions of maliciously encrypted files can be restored with ease, allowing companies to continue with business as usual without paying a ransom.

“The fact that Nasuni stores only snapshots and doesn’t change the original file, this is the perfect solution to get rid of the fear of ransomware,” notes AIXTRON CIO Rupprecht. “One of our suppliers was attacked, and they had up to 10 weeks of recovery time. When they told me about this, I said, ‘I have Nasuni, so I don’t have that problem anymore.’”

Data Protection Everywhere

The final piece that each of these companies – and many of our other global clients – find so beneficial is the simplicity of scale. This instant file recovery feature can quickly and easily be extended to new offices in small, remote locations. When an enterprise acquires another operation, even one with multiple global offices itself – all of these locations enjoy instant file recovery. This helps IT demonstrate the value of the Nasuni platform to the business as a whole, since it offers immediate support of strategic acquisitions – without adding to hardware costs.

To find out more about how the Nasuni platform helped each of these enterprises, check out the case studies for Cheil Worldwide, AIXTRON SE, and Meredith Corporation today. As we say at Nasuni, ‘Stay Calm and Move Your Legacy NAS Infrastructure to the Cloud.’