Case Study: EspritXB
Easier Backups, New Business Opportunities, and Improved Revenue Streams for an ICT Service Provider
EspritXB is a Dutch ICT provider with a broad spread of clients, many of whom rely on the company’s data backup and storage services. EspritXB joined EVault’s EVault® Cloud-Connected Service Provider (CCSP) program, which enabled it to leverage a new multi-tenant backup and recovery solution— powered by EVault technology—that it quickly deployed to its customer base. The improvements in service and profitability were almost instantaneous. Implementation took just two weeks, reliability and confidence soared, and storage volumes tumbled. EspritXB now has the technology and the support to win new business in the competitive data backup market. For EspritXB, the EVault CCSP program is a platform for growth and improved profitability.
Full Story
EspritXB’s clientele includes everything from retailers to the media to software developers. One of its many services is data backup and storage, a rapidly growing market space that EspritXB wanted to expand even further. But the company was hampered by a data management solution that it had outgrown. The previous solution, Bakbone NetVault, was slow and unreliable, and the huge volume of stored data was rapidly getting out of control, which drained resources and raised costs. The company was in danger of becoming uncompetitive in a tough market.
Driven by an Overriding Commitment to Customer Care
EspritXB offers its clients faultless round-the-clock customer care. Everything the company does is underpinned by tightly defined SLAs with stiff penalties for failing to meet them.
Wim Velgersdijk, EspritXB’s Product Manager, puts it this way: “We want to build lasting relationships, especially between our managed hosting clients and our technical team. We’re building business for the long term.”
A key part of that strategy was to upgrade data backup and storage. Wim and his colleagues wanted a solution that was reliable, easy to manage, and profitable.
Only One Solution Could Meet All EspritXB’s Criteria
EspritXB looked at several providers of backup and recovery technologies. Only one covered Windows and Linux in a single, all-encompassing solution. It was the EVault product line from EVault, available to EspritXB as part of the EVault Cloud-Connected Service Provider (CCSP) program.
“EVault came out on top on all our tests,” says Velgersdijk. “It was very strong on deduplication and compression technology—which significantly lowers the storage footprint of our backup and recovery clients—as well as encryption methodology. It was better than the competition on all criteria. That helps us keep costs down, savings we can pass on to our customers. And from an operational perspective, it was important that one solution should cover both Windows and Linux platforms.”
Proof of Concept: Bare-Metal Restores as Fast as the Network Permits
EspritXB was not easily won over. They could see the benefits, but the crucial test was a proof of concept. So they tested EVault across every environment they could. They also ran a complete bare-metal restore, which many organizations rely on for quick data recovery after a major system failure.
Elvis Leegwater, Managed Services Manager at EspritXB, was delighted with the result. “The bare-metal restore to a virtual machine worked like a charm,” says Leegwater. “I could restore a machine as fast as the network permits.”
On the strength of the tests, EspritXB joined the EVault CCSP program. They saw that the technology and the business model—with its training, sales support, and marketing tools—gave them exactly what they needed to manage their clients’ data, and to grow the business. Becoming an EVault CCSP was a way of cutting costs, simplifying processes, and improving reliability.
Implementation in Just Two Weeks
As Leegwater explains, the change-over happened sooner than expected: “We planned full-blown training with EVault, but our old backup solution failed before the planned migration. So we had to jump-start our migration overnight. We migrated 300-plus servers within several days without any problems. We had one issue, which we reported to EVault support, and this was solved within hours.”
Velgersdijk agrees: “EVault implementation was easy. It took about two weeks in total, including installation, training, and migration. We could have switched customers in two or three days if we hadn’t had to tie in with our customers’ maintenance schedules. It was really a piece of cake—especially since it took four to five months to implement our previous backup solution.”
For EspritXB’s customers, the migration was trouble-free. It took only minutes to install client software on the servers and set up the schedules and retentions. The performance improvements were so striking, some customers thought the service had possibly failed. The CPU/disk activity peak they were used to seeing during full backups had vanished.
Storage Space Cut by More than 75 Percent
EspritXB’s two 6TB EVault Plug-n-Protect appliances offered more than enough space for its clients’ data. The company’s previous solution provided 35TB of backup data; after EVault compression, it fell below 8TB. EVault had cut data storage by more than 75 percent, which meant that EspritXB now needed less storage space than it had five years ago.
That’s good news because EspritXB’s storage needs are growing fast. They’re finding it easier to win new clients, while existing clients are generating far more data.
Velgersdijk explains: “We’re getting leads from EVault that look very promising. Being an EVault CCSP gives us some very persuasive arguments for winning new business— more so than before. In recent quotes we’ve been much less expensive than the competition—and we offer a better 24/7 service.”
Confidence, Optimism, and Increased Revenues
The future is looking good for EspritXB. The next stage is to start replicating customer data to the EVault cloud. That will give the company and its customers an additional layer of security by providing a “safety net” backup of all client data to the top-tier EVault data centers that comprise the EVault cloud. More important, the EVault CCSP program will boost revenues. They hope to be hosting around 50TB of backup storage next year.
“We now have a reliable solution,” says Velgersdijk. “With EVault, we no longer have to worry about the backup environment. That gives our people a good feeling. After what we had before, it’s good to be that confident.”
His advice to other ICT companies thinking of becoming an EVault CCSP is simple: “Go for it.”
