Datalogic moves to Google Cloud and seizes control of data with Veeam

Datalogic is a prolific innovator. Its devices for data capture and process automation can be found in stores, factories and many other locations around the world. To keep pushing the boundaries of its sector, the company is always looking to accelerate innovation.

“Our vision is to shape the future with intelligence and innovation,” said Roberto Mondonico, Group CIO at Datalogic. “To make this happen, we employ extremely talented people and invest in tools to help them turn brilliant ideas into effective products. On the IT team, we’re under constant pressure to provide the technology they need as quickly as possible.”

With R&D specialists and engineers located all around the world, Datalogic saw an opportunity to help its brightest minds work together. However, it had to overcome the challenge of sharing data over large distances first.

“Both our R&D and engineering teams use tons of data in their everyday work,” said Roberto Mondonico. “If they were going to collaborate across borders, we needed to give them the ability to access shared datasets fast, but replicating them between local data centers would become expensive, soon.”

So, Datalogic’s cloud strategy was born. By moving to a centralized cloud-based environment with support for machine- and deep-learning, the company saw a chance to promote better use of expertise across the company.

“We settled on Google Cloud as our target cloud,” said Roberto Mondonico. “Now, we had to plan the migration, which is no small task for a data-intensive company like ours that values speed of innovation above all else.”

To facilitate its move to the cloud, Datalogic chose the Veeam Data Platform, which enables low-risk, straightforward migration of data workloads between on-premises and cloud environments. Veeam is also the company’s data protection solution of choice.

“We selected Veeam to help with the migration at the very start of our cloud journey,” said Pierpaolo Antonucci, Technology Operations Manager at Datalogic. “We compared it to other tools and selected Veeam been the faster tool.”

To accelerate the migration further, the IT team used Veeam to make replicas of each of its virtual machines (VMs) and powered them on in Google Cloud.

“With Veeam, we were able to migrate a huge number of VMs in a remarkably short period,” said Pierpaolo Antonucci. “We’re considering a multi-cloud strategy for the future and we know that Veeam will support us there too, since it makes moving data between different on-premises and cloud platform super easy.”

For over eight years, Datalogic has relied on Veeam to protect its mission-critical information. Today, the company has 400TB of data; though this is growing fast as a result of Datalogic’s R&D and engineering activities.

“The IT manager for our U.S. operations recommended we use Veeam across the Datalogic group, and we adopted it with gusto,” said Pierpaolo Antonucci. “With Veeam, we back up our remaining on-premises systems and everything hosted in Google Cloud. It gives us the ability to protect 100% of our data with a back-up success rate that’s near-perfect.”

Datalogic now has centralized control and visibility of data protection across the company. The insights provided by Veeam are paying dividends, helping the IT team to optimize use of resources, while and simplifying compliance with regulatory requirements.

“Veeam’s management portal is a game-changer,” said Angelo Iannello, CISO at Datalogic. “It gives us immediate insight into the status of all our backups, which we use to make better decisions about capacity planning and utilization.”

With Veeam, Datalogic ramped up its ability to recover fast from significant incidents — even a severe cyber-attack. Rather than relying on its own assessment of its risk level, the company calls in a third-party evaluator each year to run an evaluation.

“Cyber-security is a growing priority for us, so we call in a different company to conduct penetration testing every year,” said Angelo Iannello. “So far, none have been able to access our Veeam backup servers, so they’ve rated us very highly. Looking ahead, we plan to use Veeam to create an additional backup in the cloud. Whatever we decide to do next, Veeam is allowing us to seize control of our data so we can succeed.”

• Empowered Datalogic to move workloads between on-premises and cloud environments, removing constraints on its digital transformation.
  “By giving us control of our data, Veeam is helping Datalogic remain an innovation leader,” said Roberto Mondonico. “We are a unique company occupying a unique market position, and Veeam is helping us build on that competitive advantage.”
• Raised backup success rate to near-100%, enabling comprehensive protection of Datalogic’s 400TB of data.
  The Datalogic IT team is alerted in the unlikely event of a backup failure, allowing them to take immediate action to minimize data loss in the event of a disaster.
• Contributed to Datalogic achieving a high cyber-security rating from a third-party evaluator thanks to the ability to restore data quickly and reliably.
  “We get a different company to look for vulnerabilities in our systems annually,” said Angelo Iannello. “Since we deployed Veeam, we’ve consistently been scored highly for the security of our backups and our ability to recover data.”