Provision of cloud based backup as a service (BaaS) for Trent & Dove

Summary

The A4S Cloud Team delivered a ‘cloud based backup as a service’ (BaaS) using the Microsoft Azure Backup Server, real time monitoring alerting is provided using the A4S Lighthouse Service.

A managed service is also implemented to continuously monitor performance and health, support is provided for any incidents or upgrades when required.

Challenges

Trent & Dove has a short deadline to replace their existing backup service delivered using the capable Veeam platform which has been in service for several years.

Backup and retention policies required to be reviewed and updated to ensure compliance and cost efficiency. Archive data would need to be recovered.

Backup is an essential part of any IT infrastructure, but it comes with its own set of challenges. Here are some common backup challenges:

Data growth: As organisations generate more data, backups become more time-consuming and require more storage space.
Complexity: IT environments are becoming more complex, with data spread across multiple platforms, applications, and devices, making it challenging to ensure comprehensive backups.
Security: Backup data can be vulnerable to cyber threats, such as ransomware attacks or data breaches, which can compromise the integrity of the backups.
Reliability: Backup failures can result in data loss, which can be catastrophic for an organisation. Ensuring backups are reliable and can be restored in a timely manner is crucial.
Compliance: Organisations may be subject to regulatory compliance requirements that mandate specific backup and retention policies. Compliance requirements can add complexity to backup operations and require additional resources.
Cost: Backup solutions can be expensive, and as data volumes grow, the cost of backup hardware, software, and storage can increase significantly.
Monitoring: Regular monitoring of backups is necessary to ensure that backups are being performed correctly and that data can be restored when needed. This can be time-consuming and require additional resources.

Overall, backup challenges can be complex and require significant resources to overcome. It’s essential to have a well-planned backup strategy that considers these challenges and ensures the reliability and security of backups while remaining cost-effective.

Service features

The A4S BaaS offering ensures the client can focus on delivering services to its own customers safe in the knowledge that backups are being continuously monitored and maintained.

The A4S BaaS offering is based on Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS) which is fully integrated with the Azure cloud service, very capable and cost effective.

Here are some of our key service features:

Monitoring and Reporting: We include monitoring and reporting tools, which allow organisations to track backup performance and ensure that backups are running as expected.
Security: We build in robust security measures, such as encryption and multi-factor authentication, to ensure that backup data is protected from unauthorised access.
Cloud Storage: Data is securely stored in the cloud, which means that data can be accessed from anywhere and is not tied to a particular physical location, where needed we can enable geo-replication for further levels of resilience.
Ongoing Support: We continuously assess the service for health and performance issues.
Cost effective licensing: The service is very cost effective with low cost licensing and no need (in many cases) for dedicated expensive backup infrastructure.

Benefits

Our backup as a service benefits mainly focus around allowing the client to concentrate on delivering their own internal business services whilst we ensure backups are efficient, cost affective and reliable.

We have listed some more of the key benefits below:

Cost Savings: BaaS eliminates the need for organisations to invest in expensive hardware, software, and IT resources required to manage backup data on-premises. BaaS providers offer a subscription-based pricing model, which allows organisations to pay only for the storage they need, reducing their overall backup costs.
Scalability: BaaS allows organisations to easily scale up or down their backup storage needs based on their business requirements. This makes it easy for organisations to accommodate their changing backup needs, without the need for upfront investments in hardware and software.
Reliability: BaaS providers offer a reliable backup infrastructure with built-in redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities. This ensures that backup data is always available when needed, minimising the risk of data loss or downtime.
Time Savings: BaaS eliminates the need for manual backup processes and frees up IT resources to focus on other important tasks. This saves organisations time and effort, allowing them to be more productive and efficient.

Overall, Backup as a Service provides organisations with a cost-effective, scalable, accessible, secure, reliable, and time-saving way to manage their backup data in the cloud.

Outcome

Trent & Dove IT teams are now able to focus on the delivery of IT services to their own internal customers and tenants whilst knowing the A4S IT Operations Teams are maintaining backup and recovery capability of their business data and systems.

A4S continue to maintain the clients backup service and also take part in routine recovery tests for the purposes of assurance.

About the client

Trent & Dove is an amazing business that provides life changing services to it’s clients and truly has an incredibly positive social impact.

Trent & Dove is a charitable organisation who’s staff are devoted to improving the lives of it’s tenants and other in the surrounding areas.

We recommend reviewing their ‘about us’ section for more information: https://www.trentanddove.org/about-us/

Client statement

“We have been using the A4S BaaS Service for our company’s data backup needs, and we have been extremely satisfied with the level of service provided. The automated backup schedules and incremental backups have saved us time and effort, while the cloud storage has made our backup data easily accessible from anywhere.

The scalability and cost savings have also been a significant benefit for our organisation, as we are able to pay only for the storage we need and easily scale up or down as our business requirements change.

The security measures and disaster recovery options provided by A4S have also given us peace of mind that our backup data is secure and protected from data loss or cyber threats.

Overall, Backup as a Service has been a reliable and cost-effective solution for our organisation’s backup needs, and we would highly recommend it to other businesses looking for a scalable and secure way to manage their backup data in the cloud.”