University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is home to more than 34,000 studentsand13,000 facultyandstaff. Technology Solutions, UIC’s central IT organization, is responsible for ensuring the resilience of research, clinical,andadministrative systems.
We spoke with Dean Dang, Director of Enterprise ApplicationsandServices, about UIC’s data protection journeyandhow Commvault helps the university safeguard mission-critical operations.
Q: Can you start by introducing yourselfandgiving us a sense of UIC’s missionandwhat drives your IT strategy?
Dean: My name is Dean Dang,andI serve as the Director of Enterprise ApplicationsandServices within Technology Solutions. We support the university’s administrativeandacademic functions, aligning IT with UIC’s mission: to provide the broadest access to the highest levels of educational, research,andclinical excellence. Our commitment to access, vitality, empowerment,andcreativity is our strength.
Q: Before onboarding Commvault, what were the biggest data protectionandresilience challenges UIC was up against?
Dean: Our legacy backup system, Spectrum Protect, had accumulated years of technical debt. Recovery was painfully slow — restoring large file servers could take weeks. We also dealt with decentralized IT management across 20+ departments, inconsistent backup policies, inefficient tape storage,andno cloud options. The risks of data lossanddowntime were too high for a university of our size.
Q: When it came time to modernize, what stood out about Commvault that made it the right fit for UIC?
Dean: We’d known Commvault for over a decadeandtrusted it for Active DirectoryandExchange backups. When we evaluated options, Commvault stood out. The ability to takeVM snapshots without server agents was huge. Even more important was the multi-tenant model. It let us provide departmental autonomy while maintaining centralized governanceandsupport — exactly what higher ed needs.
Q: What changes have you seen since implementing Commvault,andhow has it elevated UIC’s cyber resilience?
Dean: With Commvault, we do nightly backups with deduplicationandsynthetic fulls. That reduces storage demandandspeeds up restores. Departments get their own “tenants” to manage backups, but we still enforce policiesandprovide support. All backups are encryptedandcan be stored on-prem or in the cloud.
We also use Air Gap Protect for immutable copiesandCleanroom Recovery for safe recovery testing. This setup means we can recover mission-critical systems in under 8 hours — compared to days or weeks before.
Q: If you were talking to other higher-ed IT leaders, what top lessons or best practices would you share about building cyber resilience?
Dean:
- Enforce multifactor authentication everywhere, especially admin accounts. Everyone can be phished.
- Build a pragmatic, team-driven DR plan. Don’t try to solve everything at once — build consensusandclarity.
- Test nightly backups. Make them immutable, air-gapped,andvalidated so you know you can restore when it matters.
Q: How do you communicate cyber risks to non-technical leaders?
Dean: We translate risk into business terms. How many hours of downtime? What does that cost in productivity, reputation,andcompliance? We use “what if” scenarios, dashboards,andregular updates on metrics like backup healthandrestore times. When leaders see the financialandmission impact, the case for resilience is clear.
Q: Looking ahead, how does Commvault fit into UIC’s long-term strategy?
Dean: UIC is hybrid — on-campus, cloud,andSaaS. Commvault covers all of it, from VMsanddatabases to M365andeven emerging AI workloads. With 95%+ deduplicationandtiered storage, we keep costs under control. And with anomaly detection, automation,andcleanroom testing, we’re preparing for a future where downtime is measured in hours, not days.
Read more about the University of Illinois of Chicago’s data protection journey here.
