Technology has always fascinated me because of its tremendous potential to change lives. My interest began with flipping through IT magazines as a teenager, before studying computer studies at school and kicking off a career in PC sales. But I soon realized that sales weren’t for me, and it was the support and operational side of IT that truly inspired me. A move from London to Cardiff, starting a family — these milestones led me to my current role as an Infrastructure Manager at Admiral, an insurance company that’s grown from a small startup in Wales, UK, to insure millions of homes and vehicles across the country.
Taking Data Protection Seriously
I joined Admiral at a pivotal point in the company’s trajectory. We were growing fast, and I needed to make sure we updated our IT capabilities to keep up with current and future requirements. In my experience, data protection is an area that should be a high priority but is often overlooked. After all, you don’t know when you might need to restore from a backup — and sadly you can’t go back in time to create one when that time comes!
I spearheaded a big shake-up of data protection at Admiral. I put together a business case for an improved solution and knew from past experiences at other organizations that Veeam would fit the bill perfectly. I’m delighted to report that our new approach with Veeam was exactly what we were looking for.
Always There for Customers
Admiral has a diverse IT environment that includes 750 VMs on-premises and many more in the cloud. We’ve got millions of customers that expect to be able to take out and service their policies 24/7 through our online portals. Put simply: we cannot afford downtime.
It’s been four years since we deployed Veeam, and it’s continued to provide a winning experience. For me, Veeam stands out because of its reliability. You really can set it and forget it. We carry out daily checks, but they’re very light touch and provide us with confidence when reviewing the latest status.
By combining Veeam with Pure Storage flash blades, we’ve gained end-to-end immutability for our backups, stepping up our cyber resilience dramatically. Veeam gives us complete control and visibility of data protection, which is key for ensuring service continuity. At Admiral, data is always flowing — and Veeam plays a key role in helping us keep it that way.
Aiming for the Top
Best of all, Veeam has evolved alongside us over the years. At Admiral, we continually pursue excellence. Forget ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ — we believe there’s always room for improvement. As a result, our IT strategy never stands still.
When we moved from on-prem Microsoft applications to Microsoft 365, we had no doubt that Veeam would work just as well in the cloud, and it delivered. We’re now looking forward and planning to use Veeam to back up workloads hosted in Microsoft Azure and Google clouds, and we’re working towards a single point of control for data protection across our hybrid multi cloud environment with Veeam.
One of my favorite things about working with Veeam is their approachability. It can be difficult to engage with big software vendors, but that isn’t the case with Veeam. They listen to their customers when we request new features and enhancements. Whether it’s at a conference or an exhibit, the Veeam team are always willing to lend an ear and give us a sneak peek into the upcoming roadmap. It’s great to feel like Admiral and Veeam are on a journey to bigger and better things together.
