Zollern GmbH & Co. KG – Play it safe when it comes to data backups thanks to AWS

Zollern GmbH & Co. KG – Play it safe when it comes to data backups thanks to AWS.

The ZOLLERN Group is a pioneer in the metal industry. 300 years of experience and innovation are reflected in the machining and processing technologies of the five complementary business areas. The ZOLLERN Group is just as innovative when it comes to IT, leveraging Microsoft Office 365 to facilitate collaboration across eleven sites. However, the company was looking to move its data off-premise into a cloud other than Microsoft’s. To this end, Bechtle linked up Microsoft O365 with Amazon Web Services (AWS) via Veaam, slashing costs by 75 per cent in the process.

Project details.

Services

Cloud
IT Security

Industry

Manufacturing

Manufacturer

Veeam, AWS

Company size

> 1,500 employees

Challenge.

Over the course of 300 years, ZOLLERN has developed from a smelting works into a global company in the metal processing industry. The company has been owned by eleven generations of the Hohenzollern family, which has developed the original works into a highly-modern, metal processing company with wide-ranging expertise and strong roots. Today, ZOLLERN has eleven production sites around the world for its five business areas—sand casting and forging, drive technology, investment casting, steel profiles and mechanical engineering elements. Employees at all of these sites use Microsoft Office 365 for purposes of collaboration, with mailbox, OneDrive and SharePoint being backed up via Veeam in the company’s own data centre located at the headquarters in Sigmaringendorf-Laucherthal, southern Germany.

ZOLLERN were looking to optimise and secure their data backups and applications by migrating them into the cloud, but was concerned that if Office 365 went down, data backups to a Microsoft 365 cloud could also be impacted. ZOLLERN therefore selected Amazon Web Services (AWS). The public cloud provider offers the highest levels of data security and ZOLLERN were also hoping to make savings on their on-premise backup. In Bechtle, Amazon recommended an IT partner that knows the areas of backup and recovery inside out.

We wanted to store our data backups in the cloud and leverage AWS to do so. Amazon recommended Bechtle as an expert in the field of backup and recovery and we were very impressed by their professionalism. We were looking for a secure cloud backup that didn’t entail increasing our expenditure. Thanks to Bechtle, we have not only succeeded in dramatically reducing costs, but we have a system that works absolutely flawlessly. We couldn’t be happier. And the collaboration with Bechtle was an added bonus.

Daniel Holstein, Head of Networks and Systems, ZOLLERN GmbH & Co. KG

Solution.

ZOLLERN were looking to continue using Veaam to back up accounts in Office 365, but now the data should be written in an S3 bucket in the AWS cloud. Bechtle’s AWS experts implemented Veeam from the AWS marketplace as a Software as a Service (SaaS), configuring it according to ZOLLERN’s wishes, who didn’t just want to back up the entire company’s mailboxes, but also its shared mailboxes, OneDrive shares and SharePoint sites. The Veeam backup saves data to an AWS S3 bucket.

For one month, Bechtle and ZOLLERN tested the new backup in a proof of concept in order to better estimate costs, with the result being that costs were roughly the same as for on-premise backup.

To not only keep costs stable, but also to reduce them, the Bechtle experts also optimised how Veeam and AWS interlinked, configuring the server so that it only operating during backup jobs, which leads to shorter run times. Bechtle also configured the restore points to optimise the use of an additional ZOLLERN archiving system. Bechtle enhanced backups by making the switch to complete mailboxes instead of individual elements and data backup volumes were kept to a minimum by AWS experts by adapting the retention policy and item level.

Business benefits.

With Bechtle’s optimisation efforts, ZOLLERN now save over 75 per cent for backups—a truly significant reduction. Data are saved in a secure cloud, the server farms for which are located in Germany. Office 365 environment backups are no longer linked with the Microsoft cloud, but are migrated to a public cloud making the environment highly scalable. Bechtle was on head to advise ZOLLERN every step of the way, with the company kept in the loop on how the system was to be technically optimised. ZOLLERN now has Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint and OneDrive data always at its fingertips.