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Alpha Bank relies on Veeam for Virtual Environment Data Protection

Veeam delivers performance integration that was missing from legacy backup

COLUMBUS, Ohio – October 19, 2020: Veeam Software, the leader in backup solutions that enable Cloud Data Management, today announced that Alpha Bank, Greece’s leading financial institution for more than 140 years, replaced legacy backup with Veeam Availability Suite to support core banking operations, digital transformation and customer experience.

By integrating with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Storage and VMware vSphere, Veeam increases backup, replication and recovery speeds by 99% to underpin the bank’s business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy. Advanced monitoring and reporting with Veeam provide visibility into the virtual environment to meet SLAs with affiliate banking partners and demonstrate compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Veeam also aligns with the bank’s goal of low total cost of ownership (TCO) by saving 30% on storage costs and 20% on software costs. Veeam improves the data duplication ratio up to 22:1 and offers affordable licensing options. 

“Veeam supports our top business priorities — data protection, BC and DR, regulatory compliance and TCO — at the highest level with minimal effort,” said Efthymios Bekas, Assistant Manager, Alpha Bank, IT Systems Division.  “Exhaustive quality and performance testing were carried out before we introduced Veeam into our IT infrastructure, proving why Veeam is considered one of the best solutions on the market and the optimal solution for Alpha Bank.”

Bekas said data protection and data management had become slow and complicated with legacy backup, putting critical IT systems supporting banking services at risk.

“Our systems must be available all the time so we can meet customers’ banking need,” he said.  “If they’re not available, we risk customer satisfaction which might damage the bank’s reputation, cause regulatory penalties and even revenue loss.”

Veeam backs up and replicates 9.2 PB of data on-premises from HPE 3PAR StoreServ snapshots across more than 7,500 VMware vSphere virtual machines to HPE StoreOnce. Veeam also integrates with HPE Nimble and HPE Primera (storage solutions Alpha Bank will deploy next).

“Veeam delivers the performance integration that was missing from our legacy solution,” Bekas said. “In addition to storage-based snapshot integration, Veeam provides revolutionary features that support digital operations including Instant VM Recovery, catalyst protocol, replication, BC and DR. Veeam protects data now and in the future.”

When the COVID-19 outbreak emerged, Alpha Bank had already fully deployed Veeam and responded quickly to the crisis based on BC planning. Within the first five days of the lockdown, 75% of the bank’s employees were working remotely via a Citrix infrastructure. Veeam safeguarded the Citrix infrastructure and supported the onboarding of a record number of new e-banking customers.

“Veeam played an important role supporting banking services, employees and customers,” stated Bekas. “We had no idea the solution we picked to replace legacy backup would not only support our top business priorities but also support us through the pandemic. Veeam provides performance, security and peace of mind.”

To learn more, visit https://www.veeam.com/success-stories.html