Global manufacturing company saves time and costs with SaaS-based Metallic Office 365
Backup & Recovery
About Linamar
Founded in 1966 and based in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, Linamar Corporation is a diversified global manufacturing company and world leader in the design, development and production of highly engineered products. They support 61 plants globally, so backing up to the cloud became necessary to streamline efficiency in both backup and recovery efforts. Without this data support system in place, Linamar ran the risk of data loss from accidental deletions as well as having critical operational data struck down by ransomware or regional emergencies. Prior to the migration to cloud, Linamar’s tape-based backup system was expensive and mired in manual, data management processes.
Challenge
Linamar recently made the shift from Microsoft® Exchange on-premises to cloud-based Office 365 for its 7,000+ users around the world and their current tape-based backup solution didn’t support it. With this shift also came the need for more robust backup of their Office 365 data, augmenting the existing Office 365 archiving features. The built-in O365 data protection was a start, but couldn’t handle the rapidly expanding demands imposed by the global network Linamar operated on. Until then, backup procedures were primarily done on-premises to tape at each individual site. Requests for restores required a chain of effort across teams and could easily take two weeks. On all levels of the corporation, there was strong motivation to minimize the costs and administrative time needed to support tape backup and find a cost-effective alternative that provided equal, if not superior data backup, recovery and security functionality
Solution
Linamar was introduced to Metallic when it was in beta two years ago and decided to evaluate the production version for
Office 365 backup. They looked at other solutions, including Backup Exec and Backupify, but the scalability and enterprise expertise of Commvault and Metallic™ Office 365 Backup & Recovery won Linamar over. They planned to set up Metallic while simultaneously migrating users to Office 365 from on-premises. Commvault worked with Linamar to make sure all the users they just imported into Office 365 were imported into Metallic. “It wouldn’t have been possible without the Commvault support and development teams,” according to Kristian Smith, a Manager of Technical Services & Support at Linamar. Kristian also liked the single view for all Office 365 backup activities: “We’re more efficient in all of our backups for Office 365 because it’s in a single pane of glass.”
Results
Moving to Metallic Office 365 Backup & Recovery helped the organization save cost and administrative time previously needed to manage tapes. And backup is no longer a fulltime job – it’s more like “when you need it, set it up.” The team estimates they’re saving 32 hours a month on average in administrator time. Scalability and availability now adapt easily to accommodate up to 15,000 unique mailboxes, backing up those mailboxes at least three times a day. And top-of-the-line support ensured a smooth implementation. Per Kristian, “Their support is responsive and reliable. The entire Commvault team always goes above and beyond every time, for every interaction.” Even more than the overall corporate savings and performance is that users see a fast response to requests for restores. Restores can now be handled 100% within the team, and take hours to execute – a far cry from the weeks it could take before with a request flowing through multiple teams.
Bottom line: Linamar achieved the data protection they needed while gaining the operational efficiencies that come from SaaS with Metallic.
13x
Scale of mailboxes
supported
32hrs/month Admin time savings
Challenges
- Moving from on-premises tape backup solution to cloud-based backup
- Protecting Office 365 platform beyond built-in Office 365 archiving features
- High administration and cost of solution and media for tape backup
Solution
- Data in the cloud made access easier and more flexible versus on-premises tape
- Single-pane-of-glass view to more efficiently manage up to 15,000 unique mailboxes
- “Set it and forget it” and ease of use reduced administrative time managing backups
Results
- Took backup from being a full-time job to “as you need it, set it up”
- Administrative time spent on backup significantly dropped on average 32 hours a month
- Restores took hours now, not weeks
“Their support is responsive and reliable. The entire Commvault team always goes above and beyond every time, for every interaction.”
– Kristian Smith
Manager of Technical Services
& Support at Linamar