Veeam and HPE 3PAR StoreServ Help Supply Chain Management Company Comply with GDPR

The Business Challenge

Elanders has embarked on quite a journey since it began as a printing company in 1908. At one point, Elanders printed all of the telephone directories in Sweden and in most Nordic countries. Soon the company printed user manuals for big international players that manufactured mobile phones, trucks, automobiles, refrigerators and freezers. Elanders provided just-in-time deliveries to these customers’ assembly lines.

Next Elanders made a series of global acquisitions to expand into new markets, including packaging, e-commerce and fourth-party logistics (4PL). By 2017, Elanders had become one of the world’s leading supply chain management companies. With offices in 19 countries, Elanders manages an immense amount of data that grows by at least 30% each year.

“Making sure that data is always available is critical to our success,” said Magnus Blomvé, IT Operations Manager at Elanders Sverige AB.

To ensure data availability, Blomvé and his colleagues virtualized their physical servers on VMware vSphere and focused on enterprise security. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (EU’s GDPR) was imminent.

“Despite our best efforts, one challenge remained,” Blomvé said. “Slow, unreliable backup and under-performing storage put data availability at risk, which put the business at risk.”

If data isn’t available, Elanders might miss a delivery deadline.

“A car manufacturer and a hardware manufacturer can’t put production on hold while they’re waiting for our deliveries,” he said. “That’s how you lose customers.”

The Veeam Solution

Elanders Sverige AB deployed modern data protection to ensure data is always available. Veeam® Availability Suite™ helps the company meet service level agreements (SLAs) with customers, comply with the EU’s GDPR and save $10,000 each year.

“Veeam is the reason our data is always available,” Blomvé said. “It’s fast, reliable and easy to use. We trust Veeam to do its job so we can serve our customers.”

Shortly after deploying Veeam, Elanders Sverige AB replaced under-performing storage with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) 3PAR StoreServ.

“We chose HPE 3PAR StoreServ because of its tight integration with Veeam,” Blomvé said. “Together they defy the limitations we faced in the past.”

Veeam backs up, replicates and recovers from HPE 3PAR StoreServ snapshots, making it easier to meet SLAs with customers. In addition, the backup window decreased by 75% (from 16 hours to four hours) to allow for more frequent backup and recovery points. Recovery speed increased by 50% as well (from 30 minutes to 15 minutes).

Veeam also monitors and reports on the backup infrastructure — a capability the company didn’t have. SureBackup® and SureReplica verify the recoverability of backups and replicas, while Instant VM Recovery® and Veeam Explorer™ for Storage Snapshots restore from a backup in minutes.

“Veeam gives us the ability to restore data quickly in our data centers,” Blomvé said.

“It all comes down to modern data protection, which is key to our business success and GDPR compliance.”

Veeam and HPE 3PAR StoreServ integration is economical too. Elanders Sverige AB saves $10,000 each year in backup infrastructure costs.

The Results

• Meets SLAs with customers
  Veeam backs up, replicates and recovers from HPE 3PAR StoreServ snapshots quickly and reliably, so Elanders Sverige AB can meet SLAs with customers more easily.
• Helps comply with the EU’s GDPR
  Not only does Veeam verify the recoverability of backups and replicas, Veeam also restores whole VMs, files and individual items in minutes so data is always available.
• Saves $10,000 per year in backup costs
  Veeam replaced legacy backup, and HPE 3PAR StoreServ replaced primary production storage, saving Elanders Sverige AB $10,000 per year.