This case study from Actifio on DataEndure is available in its entirety as a PDF here.
Legacy Approaches Transformed with Modern Solutions
DataEndure helps organizations protect, secure, access and capitalize on their data. However, they were seeing customers struggle with legacy systems and outdated strategies that no longer served business requirements. Customers needed a fresh approach that would take advantage of more advanced technology to accelerate, simplify, and reduce costs, especially for data protection and backup. Partnering with Actifio, DataEndure is moving customers from outmoded platforms designed for tape to a new virtualized data platform that expands, speeds, and simplifies data management. It is a unique value proposition with remarkable, new economic and technology benefits. And it changes the way customers do business.
DataEndure Overview
DataEndure has been helping customers overcome IT challenges for more than 35 years. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, their staff collaborates with customers across five interoperable practice areas: Security and Compliance, Information Management, Cloud, Data Science, and Infrastructure. Their extensive experience and broad technological insights focus first on the needs of their customers for secure, smart, and cost-effective solutions. They are experienced IT problem solvers with specialized expertise in developing strategies for resilience that take advantage of the best technology available. DataEndure specialists support customer’s long- term interests with modern technology that delivers genuine value and exceeds expectations.
The Challenge
With strong customer commitment and a demonstrated sense of mission DataEndure has created a thriving, competitive business that combines urgency, cost-efficiency, and consistent results. It extends to deep partner relationships, and the ability to adapt to changing markets with constant attention to finding the best of “what’s next.”
Businesses frequently struggle to achieve a range of business outcomes – lowering costs, assuring data security, accelerating business processes, extending innovation for competitive advantage. They want to take advantage of AI, cloud, virtualization, and data analytics but need help with identifying useful and proven strategies.
Yet many companies are stuck because they have invested heavily in hardware, software and skill sets that are no longer efficient or effective. They know it is time to do things differently but struggle to find the starting point. Often it feels like a “This Old House” challenge – while many issues need attention and require an array of skill sets, the flooded basement needs to take priority. Similarly, the equivalent IT transition to remodel legacy systems first requires a prioritized assessment of critical issues. Data backup frequently tops that list. DataEndure’s consultative approach is focused on each client’s particular problem or challenge to create the right roadmap.
The Solution
Organizations must deal with cost, complexity and changing market requirements to succeed. Actifio provides a unique way to solve their data backup challenges; a new way to simplify. Actifio defines the Actifio Virtual Data Platform (VDP) as “rapid incremental forever backup and scalable instant recovery for database, NAS and file workloads in VMs, physical machines, and the Cloud.” As an innovative shift away from traditional approaches Actifio provides all the speed, simplicity, and cost efficiency that customers search for.
Together, DataEndure and Actifio provide a new and better way. Their partnership is based on a shared philosophy that the first priority is to make customers comfortable
and successful; to help them adapt the way they operate IT and how they manage data. Benefits often extend to staff and budget efficiencies, infrastructure improvements, and the nature of how data is integrated into the business.
Building, maintaining and strengthening resilience is at the core DataEndure’s business. Their mission, simply put, is to assist customers with successful data strategies. For nearly 20 years, that meant helping customers deploy the best available backup solutions. But systems designed for tape had inherent issues with speed and complexity. That’s what Actifio provided when a new approach became essential. “Actifio makes everything much easier,” said Zappula. “It doesn’t change the data format. It handles object storage. And, unlike other platforms designed for tape, keeping data in the original structure is ideal for backup to disk or any cloud. Customers have gone from a data restore taking hours to a restore in minutes. Customers tell us it changes the way they do business.” Working together DataEndure and Actifio are presenting customers with this innovative value proposition that delivers economic and technology benefits they haven’t experienced before.
Beyond data backup, DataEndure now can provide customers an option to do a full application failover – something legacy backup platforms couldn’t come close to delivering without more spending, more staff, and more complexity.
Previously, failover demanded a completely different set of tools. Now, Actifio is a simple way to make customers resilient when the old technology is replaced. As DataEndure customers become more familiar with the powerful attributes of Actifio technologies, they can also expand uses to broader data management and DevOps functions.
Offering a resilience workshop, DataEndure also helps clients better understand how to tier their applications and define SLAs for each tier. When top tier applications need assurance of continuous operation, Actifio’s Resiliency Director provides the ability for near-immediate failover to a remote site.