Veeam helps Brunel protect data powering global recruitment

The Business Challenges

Brunel’s business objective is to provide clients with excellent service ranging from resource planning through deployment. The company’s recruitment and operations staff are experts in their fields. Their extensive knowledge of international logistics and local laws and regulations enable Brunel to provide efficient, cost-effective and fully compliant workplace solutions.

Brunel’s operational excellence is the result of more than 45 years of successful business conducted globally. The company’s wealth of experience gives clients confidence their resourcing and employment requirements will be managed with the highest level of professionalism.

Critical IT systems support client account management and recruitment, including Microsoft Dynamics for client relationships and Microsoft Office 365 for employee collaboration. Both systems help Brunel map out requirements for each client and create solutions to meet those requirements.

“Protecting the data in these systems is critical to meeting clients’ needs, so we faced a challenge when our legacy backup solution was no longer reliable,” said Marc Nonnekes, Manager Infra Systems at Brunel International N.V. “It was difficult to use and caused one headache after another.”

Brunel replaced the legacy solution with Veeam Availability Suite. Nonnekes said the difference between the two solutions was significant.

“Backups are reliable with Veeam, recovery takes minutes and it’s easy to use, which saves 10 to 15 hours each week in backup management time,” he explained. “We trust Veeam, so before we transitioned to Microsoft Office 365, we asked Insight Enterprises, one of our strategic partners, what they thought of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365. They agreed Veeam was the best choice for us.”

The Veeam Solution

Veeam helps Brunel protect critical data supporting recruitment services and workforce solutions. Veeam provides complete control and protection of Office 365 data, and it facilitates compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and local data retention laws.

“Brunel serves the world market for professional staffing and recruitment services, and Veeam helps us protect the data that is essential to meeting clients’ needs,” Nonnekes said.

Veeam backs up 4.5 TB of data (including 1,500 Office 365 mailboxes) on-premises and transfers backup copies to Azure for disaster recovery. If Brunel experiences a disaster situation, Veeam offers several high-speed recovery features. Instant VM Recovery restores a whole VM in minutes and Veeam Explorers for Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint restore individual items in Microsoft Dynamics and Office 365.

“Our biggest concern about moving to Office 365 was losing historical data,” Nonnekes said. “We have to be able to restore data from seven to 10 years in the past to remain compliant with GDPR and local data retention laws. Brunel operates in 40 countries, and data retention laws are wide ranging.”

In addition to helping Brunel quickly restore data within specific retention periods, Veeam protects against accidental deletion and security threats. With a few simple clicks, the IT team can restore Exchange items, SharePoint sites, OneDrive for Business accounts and Microsoft Teams data.

“We had grown familiar with the recovery features in Veeam Availability Suite, including single-item recovery, which wasn’t possible with legacy backup, so we are happy to use these features again in Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365,” Nonnekes said. “Recovering anything with Veeam is fast and easy.”

The Results

• Protects data supporting recruitment and workforce solutions
  Brunel is an international company with a strong global brand. Veeam helps Brunel protect data that supports professional staffing.
• Provides complete control and protection of data in Office 365
  “Many companies assume Office 365 is already protected in the cloud, so there’s no need to have a copy of the data,” Nonnekes said. “That’s not true because accidental deletion, user error, security threats and retention policy gaps are common in most companies.”
• Facilitates compliance with GDPR and local data retention laws
  “Compliance is straightforward with Veeam because our data is always protected and accessible,” Nonnekes said.