Veeam scalability, performance, multi-tenancy and cloud portability help Loomis consolidate 28 data centers

The business challenges

Cash is the most common payment method in the world. Bills and coins circulate among banks, consumers and retailers every minute of every day. Loomis ensures cash circulates quickly and securely in local communities and internationally.

Loomis is one of the world’s leading cash-handling companies, and one of its core business offerings is cash in transit. Secure transport vehicles collect and deliver cash and valuables between stores, banks, deposit boxes and ATMs. IT systems optimize routes, ensuring the right amount of cash is available in the right place at the right time.

Loomis operates more than 200 processing centers equipped with state-ofthe- art technology to count and authenticate millions of banknotes and coins each day. Cash management is another core offering. The company’s newest offering is Loomis Pay, an end-to-end payment platform for cash, cards and digital payments. Loomis Pay expands the company’s presence across the value chain, making it a comprehensive supplier of all forms of payment.

Business is booming for Loomis. To meet the needs of a rapidly growing company, Loomis is centralizing IT, making it more secure, flexible and efficient. The company is consolidating 28 European data centers managed by local IT teams into two global data centers in Stockholm where the head office is located.

“Our challenge was finding a backup solution offering suitable scalability, performance and cloud portability,” said Daniel Sparrman, Group CTO at Loomis. “Each data center had its own solution, but none of them met our requirements. We evaluated additional options, but only one has what it takes to protect our new cutting-edge, software-defined data centers.”

The Veeam solution

Loomis deployed Veeam Backup & Replication to protect a fast-growing multi-tenant, private-cloud infrastructure. Veeam ensures availability of cashhandling and digital payment systems by recovering them in minutes, not hours like legacy solutions. Veeam also supports regulatory compliance with securities laws such as the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

“Veeam is an important part of our consolidation strategy,” Sparrman said. “It provides easy, reliable multi-tenant backup and recovery through a single portal so local IT teams can continue to manage their systems and applications.”

Veeam facilitates the consolidation by replicating virtual workloads from each local data center to the two global centers. When the consolidation is complete, Veeam will back up approximately 2,000 VMware vSphere virtual machines (VMs) to Dell Unity.

“Backup is critical, but recovery is even more critical in our industry,” Sparrman said. “One of our competitors had an outage that lasted four days, and they lost roughly 20% of their customers. We never want to be in that situation.”

Veeam helps Loomis avoid downtime by offering high-speed recovery features that were missing in legacy solutions, such as SureBackup® (verifies recoverability), Instant VM Recovery® (recovers in minutes) and Veeam Explorer™ for Microsoft SQL Server (recovers individual items in SQL, which supports most IT systems).

“We’re so impressed with Veeam Backup & Replication that we’re deploying Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 as well,” said Jean-Michel Blanc, Group Head of IT Infrastructure at Loomis. “We don’t want to lose access and control of historical data as we transition to Office 365, and we want flexibility to restore mailboxes on-premises from Microsoft’s cloud.”

Veeam eliminates the risk of losing total access and control of Office 365, helping Loomis comply with regulations like ESMA. Veeam Explorer™ for Microsoft Exchange offers advanced search capabilities and flexible restore options to perform eDiscovery of Office 365 archives.

“We’re a publicly traded company, so we comply with securities laws in countries where we do business,” Blanc said. “If we’re required to provide emails containing communication about a company we’re acquiring, Veeam helps us find and restore them fast.”

Blanc said another benefit of using Veeam is the 24.7.365 technical support.

“Veeam is very customer-oriented and always willing to help us solve issues and think through new processes,” he explained. “For example, our IT infrastructure currently resides in a private cloud, but we may move to a hybrid cloud in the future. Veeam’s cloud portability will enable us to do that, and if we have questions along the way, we know the technical team will support us.”

The results

• Provides scalability to protect a fast-growing, multi-tenant cloud infrastructure
  “By consolidating our data centers, we’re becoming more strategic and efficient in the way we use technology to support the business,” Sparrman said. “Veeam replication is facilitating the consolidation, and Veeam backup is protecting the new cloud infrastructure. Our goal is to use the best solutions available, and that includes Veeam.”
• Recovers cash management and digital payment systems in minutes, not hours
  Veeam supports Loomis’ mission to secure the supply of cash in society by recovering critical IT systems fast. Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server restores databases underpinning these critical systems quickly.
• Supports regulatory compliance with securities laws such as the ESMA
  To protect sensitive data and maintain compliance objectives, Veeam provides total access and control of all data, including historical emails in Office 365.