Essilor sees IT resiliency more clearly with Veeam and Azure

The Business Challenges

Essilor improves lives by improving sight.

Vision is widely considered the most important sense humans have, yet vision problems impact nearly everyone. Most people need prescription glasses at some point in their lives, and they may need additional glasses for reading, blocking the sun’s rays and filtering blue light from laptops and other digital devices. Essilor’s prospective customer base is enormous, so the company expands regionally to meet demand.

Billions of people live in Essilor’s Amera region, so the company embarked on a digital transformation of business processes to manufacture and distribute vision products more efficiently. The challenge was ensuring data is always available.

“The solution we used for data protection didn’t offer proper backup,” said Petru Craciunas, Head of the IT Infrastructure and Information Security at Essilor Amera. “If our infrastructure had become corrupted or encrypted, we may not have been able to recover data, and the business can’t run without data. We realized we needed a solution that would provide continuous data protection.”

“Our data protection requirements are simple,” Craciunas said. “We need native cloud backup with the ability to restore our on-premises IT infrastructures to the cloud in a disaster situation such as a ransomware attack. We also need data migration support for our digital transformation, as well as flexible licensing. The IT infrastructures in our region are always changing, so licensing must adapt to our infrastructures on a yearly basis, not every three years like Commvault.”

The Veeam Solution

Essilor Amera deployed Veeam to ensure IT resiliency through native Azure backup and recovery. Veeam also provides easy, efficient replication to support the region’s digital business transformation, and it offers flexible annual licensing that saves $80,000 over three years.

“Veeam is amazing,” Craciunas said. “It’s the most versatile data protection solution for IT resiliency in the age of repeat ransomware attacks.”

Research shows that 80% of organizations hit with ransomware suffer a second attack, and nearly half of the organizations that were attacked a second time believe it was the same attacker.

“Ransomware attacks are increasing, and one of the best ways to avoid them is to have solid backups that can’t be encrypted in a secure cloud,” Craciunas said. “That’s what Veeam offers, and that’s why Veeam is a priority for us.”

Veeam backs up and replicates 45 TB across 600 virtual machines (VMs) on-premises, between data centers and to Azure. Some VMs are in Azure, so Veeam backs them up too. For recovery purposes, Veeam can restore onpremises VMs to Azure, and Veeam can restore the VMs residing in Azure.

Simon Doroja, Data Center and Team Lead at Essilor Amera, said native Azure backup and recovery is just one reason Essilor Amera deployed Veeam.

“Another reason is that Veeam supports our digital transformation by replicating VMs quickly and easily for data migration,” he said. “We tested migration with Commvault, but it was complicated. Everything is easy with Veeam, including technical support. If we have a question or concern, the Singapore team fully supports us.”

Doroja said another difference between Veeam and Commvault is licensing.

“Commvault’s licensing is for three years, but a lot can happen to our IT environments in three years, especially when the cloud is involved,” he explained. “Veeam licensing is annual and flexible, so it adapts to the changing needs of each environment throughout our region. There are no constraints with Veeam.”

Veeam licensing is also affordable, saving $80,000 over three years.

“That savings is directly related to Veeam’s versatility,” Craciunas said. “For us, Veeam is the best solution for data protection, and it’s the easiest to use. Our business partners agree. They use Veeam too, and they say backup and recovery can’t be any easier.”

The Results

• Ensures IT resiliency through native Azure backup and recovery
  To avoid the risk of data loss, Essilor Amera sought modern data protection with seamless cloud integration.
  “Veeam sends backup copies to Azure to enforce our presence in the cloud,” Craciunas said. We test our ability to restore from backups often, and Veeam works every time.”
• Supports the region’s digital transformation with easy, efficient migration
  “We use Veeam not only for data protection, but also for our business transformation to the cloud,” Doroja said. “Replicating VMs with Veeam is fast and simple.”
• Offers flexible, adjustable licensing that saves $80,000 over three years
  “Veeam licensing adapts to the needs of our changing IT environments and our business each year,” Craciunas said. “This type of licensing is important to us. It’s must easier to manage, and it’s more affordable.”