The Business Challenge

The Bunker Secure Hosting is a managed service provider with more than 20 years in the Internet industry. The Bunker builds and manages private and multi-tenant infrastructures that support and protect customers’ mission-critical applications and data.

More than half of the Bunker’s revenue comes from customers in two markets: financial technology (fintech) and financial services. The Bunker also serves customers providing health care, legal and professional services, amongst other industry sectors.

“We work in markets that need and value security,” said Philip Bindley, Chief Technical Officer for The Bunker. “We operate secure facilities, we employ the best security experts and we’ve attained a wide range of external accreditations. Nevertheless, data and applications aren’t secure unless they’re backed up reliably. That’s why we’ve always used Veeam.”

Veeam® Backup & Replication™ helps the Bunker deliver on its promise of highly secure and available IT.

“Veeam was our go-to availability solution from day one,” Bindley said. “We chose Veeam because it’s easy to use, reliable and has a simple licensing model — per virtual machine (VM), which is ideal for managed service providers. Veeam is also well known and well respected. As soon as prospective customers hear we use Veeam for backup, nothing else has to be said.”

Veeam helps the Bunker serve hundreds of customers, but there’s always room for more. The challenge was identifying a new target market and creating a new line of business. The solution was easier than anyone imagined.

The Veeam Solution

Veeam enables The Bunker to move beyond traditional hosted services by targeting a new market and creating a new line of business. The new market is massive: organisations with on-premises VMs. The new line of business is profitable: Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), which are powered by Veeam.

BaaS and DRaaS deliver powerful business benefits to organisations of all sizes. According to a report compiled by Enterprise Strategy Group, 71 percent of organisations said decreased costs (capital and operating) was the top business benefit, followed by increased security (37 percent) and the ability to repurpose personnel to protect more strategic onsite IT systems (25 percent).

The Bunker’s growing customer base uses Veeam Cloud Connect to back up and replicate their on-premises VMs to the Bunker’s cloud.

“Veeam Cloud Connect is the gateway for cloud-based backup and DR,” said Greg McVey Head of Business Development for the Bunker. “Veeam provides a low barrier to entry for companies that are reluctant to move away from tape backups stored offsite. We let them test drive Veeam backup free for 30 days, and at the end of their trial they can cancel, or they can convert to a full account, which is what most of them do. Veeam enables us to take our message of 24.7.365 Availability and business continuity to a much wider audience.”

Indeed, the audience is widening. Just five months after introducing BaaS and DRaaS, the Bunker had already converted 80 percent of its targeted market into paying customers.

“One of the main reasons prospects become customers is because Veeam Cloud Connect is so easy to use,” Bindley said. As CTO, Bindley designed Veeam-powered BaaS and DRaaS for the new target market.

“Ease of use is paramount, making Veeam hugely beneficial to our business,” he continued. The last thing a service provider wants is difficult, complex technology that inhibits business growth. Veeam is simple, effective and ticks every box that’s important to our customers and us: confidentiality, integrity and availability. Veeam Cloud Connect encrypts their data (confidentiality), backs up and recovers reliably (integrity) and helps us deliver on our promise of 24.7.365 Availability.”

Bindley said Veeam helps support the Bunker’s business growth in additional ways.

“The economies of scale Veeam provides are brilliant. We’re backing up hundreds of new VMs thanks to Veeam Cloud Connect, yet we’re spending no additional time on backup because Veeam is reliable, which helps us control operational costs. No managed service provider wants to spend hours each day troubleshooting failed backups—that’s a waste of company time.”

Bindley said Veeam licensing is another benefit.

“I’ve used several enterprise-level backup solutions during my career, and they all had complicated licensing, making it difficult to build backup and DR services around them,” he explained. “Veeam is different. Veeam is licensed per VM, making it easy to offer BaaS and DRaaS.”

The Results

• Extends the Bunker’s 24.7.365 Availability message to a broader audience
  Every organisation must avoid data loss, remain compliant and preserve data integrity. As traditional methods of backing up large amounts of data, such as tape backup and offline storage, become less cost-effective and increasingly unreliable, Veeam Cloud Connect makes it easy for the Bunker to reach out to companies with on-premises VMs that haven’t moved their backups to the cloud yet.
• Satisfies 80 percent of a new-customer acquisition goal in only five months
  Just five months after introducing BaaS and DRaaS, the Bunker had converted 80 percent of its targeted market into paying customers. Veeam’s ease-of-use is one of the reasons. Veeam customers simply back up their on-premises VMs to the Bunker’s cloud via Veeam Cloud Connect. They don’t even have to worry about limited bandwidth because Veeam offers built-in WAN acceleration.
• Controls operational costs and simplifies licensing
  

  Veeam’s ease-of-use applies across the board—from customers to service providers. Veeam is so reliable and easy to use that the Bunker doesn’t have to spend time troubleshooting failed backups, which helps control operational costs.

  Veeam licensing is simple and easy too. Veeam offers monthly rental and perpetual licenses to partners in the Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) programme (the Bunker is a gold partner). Flexible licensing lets partners choose the licensing option that best fits their business model.