Harte Hanks standardizes data protection, optimizes IT and increases efficiency with Veeam

The business challenges

Harte Hanks helps brands attract, retain and build loyalty among their customers. As an expert in defining, executing and optimizing the customer journey, Harte Hanks creates meaningful interactions that connect clients with their customers in more powerful ways. From visionary thinking to tactical execution, the company is changing the game of customer engagement by bringing the human aspect back to marketing.

How? Harte Hanks decodes real-time human behavior to reveal business opportunities. Through a full complement of data services, Harte Hanks identifies audience groups on behalf of its clients to deliver insightful information about their customers. By marrying its data-driven understanding of human behavior with a seamless connection to the consumer, the company manages the full customer experience through digital marketing, direct mail, logistics, sampling, fulfillment and customer care.

Data reigns supreme at Harte Hanks, so protecting data and the IT systems that generate, analyze and support it are top business priorities. The most critical IT systems include a home-grown warehouse management system, an Avaya customer care system and a proprietary marketing services platform.

“These systems and their data must be backed up and available continuously,” said Elliott Peterson, CTO at Harte Hanks.

“If they’re not, we can’t deliver on commitments to clients. Our goal was to standardize data protection and optimize IT, but we also wanted to begin leveraging competent third-party managed services so we could focus on innovation and growth for the company. We contacted Contour Data Solutions and quickly realized it was a great fit. As a Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) partner, they offer scalable, state-of-the-art technology including Contour Cloud to host our IT infrastructure and Veeam Availability Suite to protect our data. We knew we were in the right place.”

The Veeam solution

Harte Hanks simplified its IT infrastructure with Veeam and Contour Cloud, thereby improving data protection standardization and governance, as well as more easily maintaining compliance for regulations including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

“Our company helps many of the biggest brands improve their customer experience, and Veeam and Contour Cloud help us be more proficient and efficient,” Peterson said. “Their reliable, state-of-the-art solutions scale with our business.”

Veeam backs up 550 TB across Harte Hanks’ 400 virtual machines (VMs) in Contour Cloud. In total, Veeam backs up nearly 7 PB across 5,000 VMs for Contour Data Solutions and its customers.

“Veeam and Contour make sure our data is protected and available around the clock,” Peterson said. “Data has to be backed up constantly, and it can never be compromised. Our clients work across industries, so their data must comply with requirements like SOX, HIPAA and GDPR.”

Harte Hanks has clients in nearly every industry, including consumer electronics and entertainment. When a large electronics and entertainment firm wanted to generate buzz about its products, Harte Hanks created an integrated marketing campaign using direct mail to drive web traffic, emails to deliver the right product information at the right time, catalog drops and freestanding inserts to engage consumers. When a large entertainment company needed help transitioning its customer base from cable and satellite programming to an online subscription service, Harte Hanks built a cross-channel customer relationship management system that made the transition seamless and easy. In each case, data and the systems supporting it had to be protected and available continuously.

“Our clients trust us with their brands and their customers, and we trust Veeam and Contour Data Solutions with our data and IT systems,” Peterson said.

The results

• Improves data protection, reliability, availability, security and privacy
  “We needed to scale the business quickly while maintaining proficiency,” Peterson said. “Veeam and Contour Data Solutions delivered exactly what we needed.”
• Consolidates and modernizes IT, improving manageability and performance
  Harte Hanks standardized data protection and optimized its cost structure.
• Supports regulatory compliance for SOX, HIPAA and the GDPR
  “Most of our customers have strict data privacy regulations,” Peterson said. “Working with Veeam and Contour Data Solutions ensures data is protected and available all of the time.”