Dental Care Provider Bridges the Availability Gap with Veeam

The Business Challenge

Bupa Dental UK was established in 2017 when Bupa, a global health and care company, acquired Oasis Dental Care for £835 million. The acquisition was a significant milestone in Bupa’s strategy to offer high-quality dental services. Today Bupa Dental UK is a leading provider of private and National Health Service (NHS) dental care.

What made Oasis Dental Care such an attractive business acquisition? A highly available IT infrastructure was one reason. Bupa knew high availability would be advantageous when acquiring additional dental practices in a fast-growing market.

The dental market is growing quickly in the United Kingdom for several reasons. The population is ageing, dentistry is becoming a higher profile public service, and cosmetic dentistry is increasing in popularity. According to the IBIS World Report on UK dental practices, the market was worth approximately £6.5 billion in 2015 and will reach £7.5 billion by 2020–2021.

In order to build a highly available IT infrastructure, Bupa Dental UK had to overcome a major challenge. Unreliable backup and long, drawn-out recovery of critical systems such as practice management software put dental practices at risk for downtime. Practice management software supports almost every function in a dental office, including patient records, scheduling and billing. If offices can’t access their practice management software, they may face downtime, making it difficult to treat patients.

To eliminate the risk of downtime, Bupa Dental UK replaced legacy backup with Veeam Backup & Replication. Veeam delivers 24.7.365 Availability of critical IT systems, and 24.7.365 Availability was one of the reasons Bupa purchased Oasis Dental Care.

The Veeam Solution

Bupa Dental UK is one of the largest providers in the UK’s dental market. More than 400 practices serve well over 2 million patients. Veeam provides 24.7.365 Availability of the critical IT systems supporting each practice, including practice management software that helps dentists treat patients efficiently and avoid downtime.

“Veeam is the gold standard for 24.7.365 Availability,” said Mike Conjoice, Technical Lead at Bupa Dental UK. “Veeam delivers reliable and recoverable backups so our dental practices can focus on their top priority: patient care.”

There’s strong customer demand for high-quality, value-for-money dental services that are convenient and easy to use; therefore, Bupa Dental UK is growing and acquiring additional dental practices. Veeam is deployed in each practice so critical IT systems are backed up locally to facilitate fast recovery. Backup copies are transferred off site for disaster recovery DR.

“Veeam gives us a single pane of glass so at any point in time we know if backups have completed successfully in every practice,” Conjoice said.

Bupa Dental UK uses a Veeam feature called SureBackup to verify the recoverability of backups. Another feature called Instant VM Recovery restores practice management software from the latest backup. Therefore, Veeam helps Bupa Dental UK maintain rigorous recovery time and point objectives (RTPO).

“Our recovery time objectives decreased by 98 percent—from three days to a few minutes,” Conjoice explained. “Our recovery points increased from one every 24 hours to one every hour. Before Veeam, it was difficult to determine how many reliable recovery points we had. With Veeam, we know exactly how many reliable recovery points we have, which helps us maintain compliance with the Data Protection Act.”

Conjoice said Veeam saves time too.

“Veeam is so reliable and easy to use that we save approximately 30 hours each week compared to legacy backup,” he said. “That adds up to more than 1,500 hours each year. We use that time to concentrate on ways IT can enhance security during acquisitions.”

Veeam helps Bupa Dental UK with one more IT project: the digital transformation from a physical server environment to a virtual server environment.

“Veeam is fool-proof in virtual environments,” Conjoice said. “There’s nothing faster and more reliable for backup and recovery.”

The Results

• Enables dental practices to focus solely on patient care, not IT
  Bupa Dental UK leads the way in dental health with a nationwide network of dental professionals who focus on patient outcomes, not backup and recovery.
• Helps practices avoid downtime that can cost the business in excess of £10,000 per practice, per day
  By providing dental practices with 24.7.365 Availability of their critical IT systems, including their practice management software, Veeam helps them avoid downtime and serve patients efficiently.
• Improves RTPO and saves more than 1,500 hours each year
  Veeam helps Bupa Dental UK maintain rigorous RTPO, which saves time so the IT team can focus on ways to enhance security during acquisitions.