Data resilience in action: Greenchoice’s path to a sustainable future with Veeam

Greenchoice is all about sustainability. The company is driving the Netherlands’ transition to renewable energy sources, while also helping its customers become more sustainable through green energy, insulation, solar panels, electric vehicle charging, and more. With its sights set firmly on a future where the Netherlands is 100% powered by renewable energy, Greenchoice wanted to unlock greater agility while satisfying growing customer expectations.

“Our name says it all; we are the green choice for the people and businesses of the Netherlands,” said Dennis Versteegen, Senior System Engineer at Greenchoice. “We’re working toward our sustainability targets against a backdrop of non-stop change. For example, customers want more transparency and control than ever before. We must also respond to fluctuating energy prices. Unless we can shift gears fast when we need to, we risk losing business.”

Greenchoice is harnessing the latest technology to ensure it can respond quickly and to any incident. However, maintaining comprehensive data protection and business continuity for mission-critical systems such as Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Entra ID posed a challenge.

“Fast, reliable access to data is critical to Greenchoice, since it enables us to deliver reliable services, communicate accurately with customers, and purchase energy at the best price,” said Versteegen. “As our data volumes grew exponentially, the native data retention and recovery options we relied on for our Microsoft 365 and Entra ID environments no longer met our needs. We wanted more control, flexibility, and assurance when it came to protecting these vital systems.”

Greenchoice selected Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 and Veeam Data Cloud for Entra ID for their all-inclusive data protection services with unlimited storage. This new approach helps the company strengthen business continuity, security, and compliance.

“As long-time users of Veeam to protect our on-premises systems, Veeam was the natural choice for our Microsoft SaaS applications too,” said Versteegen. “The deciding factors were Veeam’s proven reliability, ease of use, and strong track record in cloud data protection.”

Bringing Microsoft 365 and Entra ID under the protection of Veeam allows Greenchoice to take advantage of features such as immutable backups, encryption at rest, and advanced storage compression. The company also rolled out daily automated backups and granular recovery options, all without impacting their production systems.

“Onboarding onto Veeam Data Cloud was simple and we were able to replicate the backup policies we use for our on-premises environment with minimal effort,” said Versteegen. “The Veeam customer success department played a key role in helping us to hit the ground running — our representative made sure we set up the Veeam solution correctly so that we could fully take advantage of our new capabilities. Her guidance saved us a lot of time and de-risked the process dramatically.”

Choosing Veeam is helping Greenchoice to raise the bar for data protection while enhancing internal efficiency. The company is using the time saved to empower its users with new and improved IT services, laying a strong foundation to accelerate their energy transition.

“Deploying Veeam has cut backup times by 10%, virtually eliminating the risk of them overrunning and affecting IT service levels,” said Versteegen. “Our data protection administrative workload has dropped by 25%, which frees up time for our IT team to focus on optimization and innovation.”

With the ability to recover Microsoft 365 and Entra ID data faster than ever before through Veeam, Greenchoice is driving up business continuity. Plus, by keeping essential productivity tools at employees’ fingertips, the company is in a better position than ever before to pursue its sustainability goals.

“With Veeam, availability for our Microsoft 365 and Entra ID environments has risen by 10%, minimizing interruptions to users’ work,” said Versteegen. “Veeam has given our business resilience yet another boost, allowing Greenchoice to concentrate on our mission to build a greener Netherlands.”

• Cut backup times by 10%, reducing the risk of impact on IT service levels
  Greenchoice can back up Microsoft 365 and Entra ID data every day without worrying about the impact on end users, which enhances data protection.
• Decreased data protection administrative workload by 25%
  The company has saved valuable time that it now spends on developing new internal services and strengthening IT security.
• Boosted availability levels by 10% to support exceptional business resilience
  “Veeam helps to ensure our business-critical Microsoft 365 and Entra ID are available to users without fail,” said Versteegen. “This translates into a more productive workforce who are ready to guide the Netherlands through the next steps of energy transition.”