Data Backup Digest

It’s always difficult when a business has been around for a long time, reached a certain size, and found that their IT systems are no longer capable of handling tasks efficiently. This is even more true in recent times, where companies are producing vast amounts of data and aren’t properly storing it or don’t have a good backup plan in place should disaster strike.

The fast food enterprise Wendy’s found themselves in such a position recently. The entire company is undergoing a complete overhaul of their IT systems in order to modernize them and make them simultaneously effective and financially viable to maintain.

Wendy’s was using a variety of point products from legacy providers in order to maintain its backup and recovery infrastructure. The full backup and recovery process they had meant that they needed to employ a full-time member of staff just to troubleshoot the system. Something had to change.

The IT team at Wendy’s carried out a proof of concept in partnership with storage firm Cohesity, which took three months. Their tests found that backup times were reduced from half a day to just two hours. The results were so pleasing, Wendy’s employed the Cohesity technology across all of their IT environment – which totals one petabyte of data, 850 Linux and Windows servers, and more than 700 VMware virtual machines.

This unification and simplification meant that all of their backup data could be managed from one interface. Their IT team managed to claim back 60 hours a month, which they could dedicated to other business critical projects the company wanted to undertake as part of their IT overhaul. It also meant that the dedicated troubleshooting employee could be redeployed and their time could be better spent elsewhere.

Wendy’s was also able to automate certain processes and thus reduce costs. Now when they add a new virtual machine, it is automatically discovered and given protection policies thanks to VMware vSphere integration. Previously this was all manual, which was an unnecessary time sink.

The burger company have managed to achieve an 18x reduction in backup storage costs, meaning they are now saving around $60000 a year. Their new hybrid model means that their platform is flexible – they can backup on-site, at a collocated site, or into the cloud.

“Cohesity is playing a key role in Wendy’s ongoing data management modernization efforts,” said Don Murawksi, data manager at Wendy’s. “Cohesity simplifies backup, automates key processes, and empowers us to re-allocate staff hours to other critical IT projects. We are already considering other potential use cases for Cohesity.”

For some companies, the boundary of reviewing all of their data and backup solutions is a daunting one, and so they carry on with inefficient solutions. However, it’s always better to bite the bullet – it might be costly and time consuming to review new solutions and implement them at first, but they will pay off in the long term and ensure that the business remains flexible and modern for the continually changing world of data.