Delivering data resilience: Kinepolis Group delivers standout cinema experiences globally with Veeam

Kinepolis isn’t just showing films; it’s competing with a wide range of out-of-home activities and at-home entertainment fighting for your Friday night. To stay ahead, every cinema visit has to feel effortless, immersive, and worth leaving the house for.

“People have more entertainment options than ever,” said Kurt Pede, Global Head of ICT Production at Kinepolis Group. “So, when they choose us, the experience has to be seamless from start to finish. Data is what makes that possible.”

From ticket purchase to the final credits, data drives everything from pricing, scheduling, customer insights, and the overall cinema experience. However, as Kinepolis expanded across nine countries, that reliance on data came with growing complexity. Different regulations, rising cyberthreats, and increasing operational scale meant the company needed total control without slowing down innovation.

“We’re operating across Europe and North America, each with different rules around data,” said Pede. “We needed a way to manage that complexity while keeping everything centralized and efficient.”

Kinepolis turned to Veeam to bring order to that complexity and keep the show running no matter what.

For nearly a decade, Veeam has underpinned Kinepolis’ data resilience strategy, protecting everything from core data centers to local cinema systems. Today, critical platforms like Microsoft SQL Server and Power BI that power sales, marketing, and real-time decision making, are fully protected and recoverable within minutes.

“One of the biggest advantages is that Veeam is hardware agnostic,” said Pede. “It gives us freedom — no vendor lock-in, no constraints. We can innovate without worrying about compatibility.”

As the business scaled, so did its infrastructure. A secondary data center was added for disaster recovery (DR), and Veeam scaled with it seamlessly. Kinepolis can now tailor data protection policies region by region while maintaining a single, centralized view across the entire organization.

The impact? Simpler operations, lower costs, and more control. In fact, the platform is so stable and easy to manage that Kinepolis brought everything back in-house, cutting outsourcing costs and freeing up their team to focus more on the customer experience.

In cinema, downtime isn’t just inconvenient; it’s lost revenue and frustrated customers. “If we lose access to data, we can’t sell tickets, concessions, or even let people in,” said Pede. “That’s not an option.”

With Veeam, Kinepolis can recover data in minutes and keep systems running without impacting customers. This results in a business that operates smoothly behind the scenes, so that on the surface, all customers see is what they come for: A great night at the movies.

• Centralized control on a global scale
  Kinepolis manages data resilience across all locations from a single platform, while still meeting regional regulatory requirements to reduce complexity without losing control.
• Rapid recovery keeps the show running
  Fast, reliable data recovery ensures ticketing, operations, and customer experiences stay uninterrupted and protect revenue and reputation.
• No vendor lock-in and more freedom to innovate
  With hardware-agnostic flexibility, Kinepolis controls costs while staying free to modernize and evolve its infrastructure.