Veeam Helps Dorel Juvenile Keep Kids Safe

The Business Challenge

“Care for Precious Life” is not just a motto. It’s in Dorel’s DNA. Dorel Juvenile cares so parents can be reassured their kids are safe. Dorel has earned a reputation for its respected brands and a commitment to innovative, quality products such as car seats, strollers and baby monitors. Each product excels in safety, design and usability so parents have peace of mind.

Dorel’s products are researched, designed, developed and tested in-house, making data the lynchpin for business success. If data isn’t available, the company can’t maintain its standards for excellence, putting child safety at risk. Dorel is committed to complying with industry legislation such as i-Size (R129), which is a new European car seat safety standard that came into force in July 2013 and forms part of the R129 regulations. R129 aims to increase the safety of children in cars by bringing the safety performance of the car seats to a new, higher level. With i-Size requiring children to sit rear-facing until they’re at least 15 months old – research has shown that there is up to 75% more protection if the young child is involved in a car accident.

In addition to creating the products that consumers award the highest ratings, Dorel maintains a strong digital connection with customers. By engaging with families and retailers around the globe, Dorel gathers the insights needed to innovate and continuously improve. Data is vital to this process as well.

“Data availability is crucial for our business,” said Stephan Hendriks, Information and Digital Director at Dorel Juvenile. “We cannot afford prolonged downtime as this would seriously harm our business. We need data to be available around the clock for our manufacturing and logistical processes, and to engage with our customers through digital channels. We must be flexible and agile.”

“It was clear our existing solution was at end of life and that we needed a new one,” said Tom Beekmans, Technical Engineer at Dorel. “It had to meet three important requirements: easy to implement, easy to use, and hardware agnostic. We wanted more flexibility in terms of management, restore capabilities and hardware integration. Furthermore, disaster recovery is high on our agenda, so a solution had to support DR in an efficient way.”

Dorel’s IT partner Acknowledge was a key player in the switch to Veeam Availability Suite, demonstrating the capabilities of the solution by setting up a pilot project featuring Veeam alongside Dell EMC in Dorel’s Paris data centre.

The Veeam Solution

With Veeam, Dorel Juvenile is ensured of nonstop data availability, enabling the company to develop, design and manufacture top-quality products giving it more confidence to make faster and better-informed business decisions in operational areas such as their European Safety Center. Moreover, Veeam saves the company tens of thousands of euros on implementation and will continue to save money on maintenance.

“Veeam is extremely user-friendly and intuitive, which means that it can be deployed in minutes,” Beekmans said. “And thanks to Instant VM Recovery, we are well-prepared for DR. We went live with Veeam in the first quarter of 2018 and the solution has proven to be very stable.”

Veeam protects and manages 300 virtual machines (150 TBs). As many other businesses, Dorel must deal with strong data growth, especially for R&D and product development. “In the end, backup is an insurance you must have,” says Beekmans. This new platform is our insurance for availability and integrity for about 1,200 users. The main advantages are ease of use, low cost, easy management and maximum flexibility. Veeam is very user-friendly which means that we are less dependent of the knowledge of a few in-house experts. With our former solution, I got a lot of calls when a change had to be made or a restore had to be done. As this is now much easier, more colleagues are able to perform these tasks by themselves, freeing up valuable time.”

Hendriks points out that with the new platform Dorel Juvenile has strengthened its operations significantly by ensuring availability of data. “When you have downtime, every second counts. With Veeam we can be up and running again instantly, supporting our operations across the business and ensuring Dorel can continue to commit to producing world-class products, which are innovative, comfortable and safe”.

The Results

• Reliable and recoverable operational data supports the excellence in design, development and manufacturing of juvenile products – in accordance with European safety legislation
  Using Veeam’s backup and recovery functionality, Dorel can keep IT systems running across all departments, allowing 1,200 users throughout Europe to work more effectively and ensure products meet Safety Standards – providing up to 75% more protection for children in car seats.
• Saving tens of thousands of euros in consultancy and maintenance costs, due to ease of deployment and management
  Veeam’s user-friendly platform was up and running in two days, whereas the former platform took at least two weeks to implement and required the continuous support of an external consultant.
• Digital marketing channels protected from data loss that helps optimize consumer engagement throughout the product lifecycle
  Using Veeam, the availability and protection of data underpins a flexible and agile digital channel, which allows Dorel to gain more from consumer feedback and to truly give their consumers a seat at the table.