Everest Windows Protects 50-year Company Reputation by Massively Improving Email Recovery Operations with Veeam

The Business Challenge

Since its establishment in 1965, Everest Windows has been dedicated to providing the best service for its customers with innovative, high quality products for the home. Today, the company has 1,100 employees across the UK, offering windows, doors, garages and rooflines.

The IT team is tasked with providing systems across the business, including sales and manufacturing operations. In addition, IT must maintain several bespoke applications from the 1990s, which means they are tasked with restoring emails that might be several years old. Business directors from both the HR and legal side of the business frequently need to access historic emails to protect Everest from a legal, regulatory and reputational perspective. Therefore, it is vital that the IT team can undertake fast, flexible and reliable email restorations.

Access, control and protection of Microsoft Office 365 data is also paramount to business continuity at Everest Windows. The IT team previously adopted an email archiving system to backup Office 365, however, they found that the solution simply wasn’t working effectively enough. “Our previous email restore system was clunky and time-consuming to use,” recalls Ben Brooks, Head of IT at Everest Windows. “Emails were archived in the cloud and it was taking lots of IT resource to locate and restore the content needed in a timely manner!”

The company is also dedicated to ensuring they are well-positioned in the future. Digital channels underpin Everest Windows’ ability to engage with customers on feedback and satisfaction, so they can keep up with the needs of the market. “It’s important that we continue to evolve technologically. This means a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy to make the organization robust and IT solutions for every team that are reliable and really easy to use,” states Brooks.

The Veeam Solution

Late in 2018, Everest Windows decided to look for a better way to backup and store all Microsoft Office 365 email, SharePoint and OneDrive data. The IT team was keen to ensure that data was stored, accessible and protected on the local site so that it could quickly search for whenever the business needed — providing it in a PST format or directly in the mailbox.

Brooks had experience using Veeam from a previous role and had always been an advocate of the platform’s ease of use. Therefore, after considering numerous email backup solutions, the decision was taken to deploy Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365.

Everest Windows found the installation process to be smooth, quick and easy. “Members of the IT team that haven’t used Veeam before have found it incredibly easy to pick up, especially compared to other backup solutions they’ve used,” notes Brooks. “It’s so intuitive that we’re going to give directors and other members of the company access to the platform so that they can complete restorations themselves. We’ve already taught our directors how to use it and they were amazed by the simplicity of the process!”

Brooks anticipates that the IT team will save significant amounts of resources thanks to Veeam: “We’re currently dedicating around three hours a week to email restores. With Veeam we’re able to reduce that to around 30 minutes, which means that we can provide this service to the rest of the business much more quickly, to meet any pressing deadlines, such as for legal cases.”

The flexibility of the system has also been important to Everest Windows. As well as being easy to use, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 provides a granular advanced search and find functionality. “Whatever’s needed, at whatever time, we can restore items to a PST format or to the cloud instantly. Incredibly, Veeam gives us better functionality… at a lower cost,” states Brooks.

The Results

• Delivers optimal assurance that the company’s Office 365 environment is always available
  Veeam eliminates the risk of Everest Windows losing access, control and visibility of their data —ensuring it is always accessible.
• Ensures business continuity by protecting the business’ legal, regulatory and reputational position
  Thanks to Veeam, Everest Windows can quickly and reliably access vital historical information whenever it’s needed, which is critical for protecting the business.
• Email restoration times reduced from three hours a week to just 30 minutes
  Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 allows Everest Windows employees to conduct email restorations themselves, freeing up resources across the business and saving on IT resources.
• Email data found easily by stakeholders across the business
  Everest Windows employees, ranging from IT experts to the line of business directors, can leverage Veeam’s advanced search capabilities, as well as the flexible recovery and export options to perform eDiscovery on Office 365 mailboxes, emails, files or sites.