Municipal Gas Authority of Georgia Chooses iland

iland Internet Solutions Corporation, a VMware-based cloud services provider for application hosting, data protection and DR, announced the Municipal Gas Authority of Georgia has selected iland Secure Cloud Backup with Veeam Cloud Connect to backup its workloads, transitioning from years of relying on physical tape libraries.

The Gas Authority is the largest non-profit natural gas joint action agency in the US, serving 79 members in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania and Tennessee who meet the gas needs of more than 245,000 customers. Natural gas has become more important to many communities and customers and the Gas Authority is safely and reliably delivering gas supplies every day. Their team is dedicated to growing natural gas sales through multiple markets.

Senior system administrator Jason Espinales-Osorio explained that as his company grew it was also expanding its physical tape libraries at a data center several miles from their office. Tape storage is one of the oldest and most difficult to access backup methods. He spent valuable time retrieving old tapes and preparing them for pickup by their tape backup vendor. Unfortunately, this time consuming task meant their tapes and data sometimes sat at the offsite location for weeks at a time.

It became evident that tape backup, with its limited amount of space and high level of maintenance, was becoming cost prohibitive. Espinales-Osorio decided to proactively seek several cloud backup vendors and discovered iland Backup as a Service (BaaS).

“We were using physical tape and retention that was clunky. I had to drive to our offices, take them out and prep them for our vendor. It was getting painful,” said Espinales-Osorio. “It was definitely time to explore cloud backups and iland was a natural fit for us.“

“An easy, cost-effective backup solution has never been more important for growing businesses, especially those with tight IT budgets and increased data availability needs,” said Brian Ussher, iland president and co-founder. “iland prides itself on being able to seamlessly transition organizations like Municipal Gas Authority of Georgia away from legacy hardware, while also providing the resources and proven technology necessary to scale and succeed.“

In iland’s Secure Cloud Backup integrated with Veeam Cloud Connect technology, Espinales-Osorio found a straightforward,cost-effective solution, allowing him to replace cumbersome tapes. He implemented a backup strategy that had direct integration and 100% compatibility with Veeam’s backup and replication software supported by iland’s Secure Cloud Console.

“iland really allowed us to get ahead of the curve,” he said Espinales-Osori. “For the longest time, we were stuck in those old ways of doing things. iland has gotten us moving forward.“

He praised the ease of the Secure Cloud Console, which allows him to manage his backups and expand his retention from anywhere. He has much more time to work on his day-to-day system administrative and network tasks without worrying about physical tapes.

“I spent so much of my time dealing with those physical tape backups because that was a priority for us. We needed to make sure that data was there. Now I’ve got more time to do more of my regular day-to-day tasks because we can automate and leverage the cloud to handle backups,” he said Espinales-Osori. “The ease of the console and expandability is critical. Now we can expand our retention policies with just an email, it’s amazing.“