GDN Argentina launches independent retail operations in months with Veeam

The de Narváez Group (GDN) is a Latin American retail powerhouse, with operations throughout Argentina, Ecuador, and Uruguay. In November 2020, the group acquired the Walmart business in Argentina and relaunched it as GDN Argentina.

“Walmart first set up shop in Argentina in 1995, so GDN Argentina was building on a 27-year history of success,” said Martín Rodríguez Falconier, IT Director at GDN Argentina. “Now, we had the chance to incorporate the de Narváez Group’s experience in the Latin American market to improve our offering.”

Under the terms of the acquisition, GDN Argentina was tasked with separating its IT operations from Walmart over a few months. In the short term, the company’s IT team sought to minimize disruption across all its retail channels. At the same time, GDN Argentina looked to optimize its IT infrastructure to enable sustained growth.

“The launch of GDN Argentina was the ideal time to rationalize and standardize our IT on optimal technologies,” said Matias Piccione, IT Infrastructure and Telecommunications Leader at GDN Argentina. “We wanted cost-efficient solutions that wouldn’t limit our future options.”

GDN Argentina identified data protection as a key priority area. The company relies on non-stop availability of data to keep goods in stock, ensure on-time deliveries, provide a seamless shopping experience across every sales touchpoint, and more.

“We were using Veeam to back up our on-premises systems and Veritas to protect our cloud cluster,” said Piccione. “We realized that we could cut our costs by standardizing on a single toolset that worked for our hybrid environment. But it was vital that we made the right choice of solution, since any downtime or worse, data loss, could affect our retail performance.”

GDN Argentina selected Veeam to help ensure high data availability for its omnichannel retail operations. The company made its decision following a rigorous comparison of Veeam with competing options including Veritas.

“Veeam is much simpler to use than Veritas and other data protection solutions,” said Piccione. “The Veeam team showed us how we could back up our entire hybrid environment through Veeam, greatly simplifying our data protection strategy.”

Today, GDN Argentina employs Veeam at both its primary datacenter, located at its headquarters, and its secondary site, at its distribution center. The company backs up a total of 200 Linux and Microsoft Windows virtual machines (VMs) running on-premises. Working with Veeam partner Wetcom, the company extended backups to its cloud cluster, enabling a single point of control for data protection for the company and all its locations.

“We always have a great experience working with Wetcom,” said Piccione. “They respond fast to any questions and help us articulate the business benefits of technology. Thanks to Veeam and Wetcom, we now back up data for all our 90-plus stores around Argentina as well as our distribution center and corporate headquarters both daily and incrementally. Veeam backups are so comprehensive that we could even afford to space them out a little more.”

With just one data backup and replication solution to manage, GDN Argentina’s IT team can work much more efficiently, confident that business-critical applications including Oracle ERP for Retail and Microsoft 365 are well-protected. Veeam has already proved itself a vital tool in supporting business continuity at GDN Argentina.

“Every experience we’ve had restoring data with Veeam has been impeccable,” said Piccione. “That allows us to ensure that our customers get the same great experience regardless of what channel they use to engage with us. Veeam has also streamlined management for data protection dramatically, while giving us enhanced capabilities.”

Standardizing on Veeam has reduced GDN Argentina’s data protection costs significantly. The company is reinvesting these savings into capabilities that add to its competitive advantage.

“Veeam also offers longer term efficiencies,” said Rodríguez Falconier. “For example, it is compatible with a much wider range of hardware and software options than competing solutions. This allows us to choose the most cost-efficient components, without compromising on data protection.”

• Replaced two backup solutions with one for all on-premises and cloud workloads, becoming dramatically more efficient.
  Since moving to Veeam for all its data protection needs, GDN Argentina has gained a single point of control for its hybrid IT environment and reduced backup administration significantly.
• Reduced data protection costs, freeing up budget for capabilities that sharpen the company’s competitive edge.
  “Now that we’ve eliminated Veritas in favor of Veeam, our data protection spend has dropped considerably,” said Rodríguez Falconier. “We’re taking these savings and investing them in providing an even better omnichannel experience for our customers.”
• Enabled technology agility through seamless interoperability with a wide range of hardware and software options.
  Liberated from the requirement to narrow its technology choices down, GDN Argentina removes barriers to innovation.