Cloud Backup Solution Boosts Efficiency for Juma Al Majid Group 

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UAE-based conglomerate Juma Al Majid Holding Group adopts Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365 to streamline data protection and support cloud strategy.

Juma Al Majid Holding Group Simplifies Data Management with Commvault

Established in 1950, Juma al Majid Holdings Group (JAM Group) is one of the leading conglomerate companies in the UAE. Through partnerships with some of the world’s most famous brands, JAM Group has expanded its businesses into multiple verticals, including automotive, fast-moving consumer goods, construction, real estate, home appliances, and financial investment. Its vision is to keep improving the quality of life for the UAE’s communities and contribute to the growth and prosperity of the nation by leveraging cutting-edge technology across all areas of operations. 

With continuous business growth leading to ever-expanding data volume over the years, it became increasingly resource-intensive for JAM Group to manage and maintain infrastructure for multiple Exchange servers within its data center. So, to remedy the situation, they adopted Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud to reduce their on-premises footprint and accelerate speed to market. 

“Delivering timely new services has been one of our key priorities to support the diversified businesses across our group of companies,” said Fadi Alzebdeh, JAM Group’s System Administrator Team Leader. “With Commvault and Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365, we can focus on innovation and bring more value to the business without devoting more resources. 

The challenge

In the past, JAM Group had to back up data from four Exchange servers to EMC Data Domain and EMC Networker, and then copy the data to tapes in a remote location. This caused significant delays up to eight weeks in responding to requests for restoring data impacting the timely delivery of new services. To support business growth, JAM Group needed to simplify data management and meet service level agreements.  

With the decision to move their data center to Microsoft Azure and adopt Microsoft Office 365 mailboxes, JAM Group needed dedicated backup for their new environments. It also wanted a SaaS based solution to take advantage of the same benefits in the cloud. 

The solution

Prior to deploying Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365, JAM Group implemented Commvault HyperScaleTM HS1300 Appliance to manage and store data in the entire on-premises environment, including around 70 virtual machines, file systems, SQL servers, Oracle Database, and RMAN backups for Oracle E-Business Suite. 

“We compared Veeam, Veritas, and EMC Networker, but Commvault outperformed the other vendors in terms of reliability, flexibility, and scalability,” said Alzebdeh. 

When JAM Group migrated over 2,500 mailboxes to Microsoft Office 365, Alzebdeh needed to find a modern Data Management as a Service solution that could support the company’s mailbox retention policy and cloud strategy. 

Due in part to their positive experience with Commvault HyperScale HS1300 Appliance, Alzebdeh and his team selected Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365 to automate daily backups in Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Teams. The company no longer needed to document the details of former employees in a spreadsheet and gained the ability to instantly recover their mailboxes. Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365 can also protect Microsoft Azure Active Directory, which will help JAM Group to fully migrate its data center to Microsoft Azure in the near future. 

The results

With Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365 unlimited cloud storage and retention, JAM Group can preserve mailbox data based on multiple retention policies – such as keeping particular emails as permanent records for legal purposes.  

“The requirement to retain emails is constantly growing in 15 TB segments, so it was not sustainable to keep adding external storage,” said Alzebdeh. “Now, with Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365, we know that all our mailboxes are backed up and can be restored anytime without worrying about storage capacity or hardware costs removing for one the need for our quantum i40 library.” 

Thanks to eDiscovery capabilities with Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365, JAM Group can also quickly search for, uncover, and preserve Exchange emails for regulatory purposes via a simple keyword query. Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365 flexible restore options also streamline granular or point-in-time recoveries for Exchange Online mailbox restoration.The IT team no longer needs to rely on a spreadsheet to know which tapes to bring from a remote site to restore the required mailboxes. This has helped to improve the data recovery efficiency response times. 

Through the intuitive user interface of Commvault and Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365, Alzebdeh and his team can rapidly generate reports via the dashboard and monitor the status of backups and recovery across the hybrid environment, which was not possible with the previous solutions. 

“The biggest benefit of using Commvault and Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365 is the simplicity and scalability. This saves us significant time in data management, eliminating the laborious task of backing up data to disc, copying to tapes, sending and recovering tapes from the remote site, waiting for the whole restoration process to finish. A major improvement empowering us to focus on developing new services rather than maintaining systems,” said Alzebdeh. “Commvault and Commvault Cloud Backup & Recovery for Microsoft 365 have given us the confidence that we now have a unified, modern data protection solution to support our future path to the cloud.”