Webjet protects travelers with data resilience — and recovery in minutes — with Veeam

It takes something special to stand out in the crowded online travel industry. Webjet has found a winning formula through customer focus, innovation, and convenience. Essential to the company’s success is the ability of its employees to collaborate effectively.

“Our business is built around technology, and we’re heading towards even more of a data-driven approach,” said Malcolm Plant, Group Cloud and Infrastructure Architect at Webjet. “Our employees rely on Microsoft 365 applications to share insights and make decisions collaboratively. Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange are all critical to our everyday operations.”

The Webjet IT team realized that the lack of dedicated backup and recovery solutions for its Microsoft 365 landscape was a gap in its data protection strategy and decided to investigate the options. With cloud-hosted systems such as Microsoft 365 climbing up cyberattackers’ target lists, the company wanted to address this risk fast.

“We relied on the 30-day retention policy that was native to Microsoft 365, and this was no longer sufficient for us — especially when it came to employees leaving Webjet,” said Plant. “We also wanted to take any opportunity to better secure our corporate data against threats, which are only growing in intensity and creativity.”

Webjet selected Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 to protect business-critical Microsoft 365 data and minimize interruptions to employees’ productivity. The company was attracted by the offering’s combination of industry-leading data protection capabilities with the ease and accessibility of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model.

“Veeam is the leading backup solution in the marketplace, so it was the obvious choice to protect our Microsoft 365 apps,” said Plant. “As a relatively lean IT team supporting thousands of users, the SaaS model of Veeam Data Cloud appealed to us due to the low admin overhead and built-in versioning. It gives us access to the latest and greatest technology without the headache of maintaining it ourselves.”

Using Veeam, Webjet backs up approximately 2TB of Microsoft 365 data per day. The company has gained better protection for this part of its IT environment out of the box, helping to reduce the risk of cyberattackers gaining the upper hand. 

“Veeam gives us confidence that our Microsoft 365 data is safer and more secure than ever before,” said Plant. “With service-level immutable backups and new security features rolled out on an ongoing basis, Veeam helps us stay one step ahead of cyberattacks.”

To ensure everything is working as it should, the Webjet IT team carries out random data recovery tests periodically. Veeam has delivered exceptional results every time, giving the team confidence that it will be able to respond quickly in the event of an incident.

“Veeam has worked perfectly for every test restore we’ve tried,” said Plant. “It’s one of the few systems I never worry about. We had an incident where a user accidentally deleted an entire file structure in SharePoint before going on leave and forgot about it until a while later. Using Veeam, we were able to recover everything in just a few minutes. In the past, it would have taken us weeks to rebuild it via a very painful process.”

Webjet has also resolved the issue it had with losing Microsoft 365 data just 30 days after an employee left the company, helping it to retain institutional knowledge. “The 30-day deadline used to catch out our managers sometimes,” said Plant. “In partnership with Veeam, we’ve eliminated the risk of losing the data we need when employees move on from Webjet.”

To help navigate the impact of an ongoing demerger on the company’s data protection strategy, Webjet is working closely with Veeam.

“Since we first started using Veeam Data Cloud, the support has been top-notch,” said Plant. “The Veeam team is always willing to help and respond instantly. As we gear up for what’s next for Webjet, we’re very happy to have Veeam on our side protecting some of our most valuable data.”

• Keeps Microsoft 365 data safe and secure with architecture that’s continually updated
  “Veeam Data Cloud gives us access to the latest and greatest technology without the headache of maintaining it ourselves,” said Plant.  
• Cuts Microsoft 365 data recovery times from weeks to minutes
  By enabling Webjet to recover data in minutes or less rather than weeks, Veeam helps the company’s employees work more productively. 
• Extends the availability of former employees’ Microsoft 365 data from 30 days to indefinitely
  By replacing the native 30-day data retention feature in Microsoft 365 with Veeam, Webjet is retaining institutional knowledge even when users move onto other companies.