UK Cloud Direct Chooses Nakivo Backup & Replication

Nakivo Inc. announced that Cloud Direct, a brand name of On Direct Business Services Limited and a cloud services provider (CSP), has selected its Backup & Replication for VM DR as a service (DRaas).

Established in 2003, Cloud Direct is a cloud services provider located in Bath, UK. The company provides scalable technologies for secure, productive, and agile businesses, so that they can compete and grow in line with industry regulations.

Cloud Direct’s IT infrastructure consists of two sites. However, being a MSP, the company also offers VM backup and DR services to customers. Helping them to achieve data availability 24/7 has always been company’s goal. This means not only meeting SLAs, but also providing customers with a level of assurance that in the event of disaster, they can return to a full operating state.

“Previously, we had used various VM backup solutions that had multiple issues and difficulties. Some were slow and difficult to set up and operate, while others required additional time and resources to manage backup jobs. Our challenge was finding a reliable, fast, and scalable VM backup solution at a right price point. We wanted a product that would provide our customers with quicker restores and lower RTOs and RPOs. In addition, we needed to provide our customers with a portal into the software,” says Rhys Evans, technical consultant, Cloud Direct.

By selectingBackup & Replication as the VM backup solution, Cloud Direct is able to provide its multiple customers with a VM DRaaS solution and reliable data protection.

“By implementing Nakivo Backup & Replication as a pre-configured virtual appliance via Puppet, the product has not only been relatively painless to install, but has reduced our overall administration overhead and update times by approximately 90%,” says Rhys.

With VM replication, Cloud Direct protects customers’ critical business services from different problems that can occur in a datacenter.

“With the help of VM replication and depending on our customers’ requirements, we aim to reduce their RPOs and RTO in the event of a disaster. With Nakivo Backup & Replication, we managed to reduce RPOs and RTOs from days to hours, in some cases even to less than an hour,” says Rhys.

While Cloud Direct mostly uses the VM replication feature, they are starting to implement more and more backup solutions for their customers, as the product has proven to be reliable and easy to implement and maintain.

“Excluding the initial full VM backup, we are usually looking at backup times that average fewer than 10 minutes per VM. Of course, however, that speed usually depends on the connectivity both from our side and the customer’s. Furthermore, we are seeing a higher data deduplication rate compared to our previous VM backup solution,” says Rhys.

Nakivo’s multi-tenancy for VM backup and replication enables Cloud Direct to manage multiple cloud backup customers under a single pane of glass.

“Multi-tenancy allows our customers to manage their own backup, replication, and recovery jobs without our involvement,” says Rhys.

Backup & Replication installed as a pre-configured virtual appliance, provides ease of use and flexibility and saves IT administration time for Cloud Direct. It allows Cloud Direct to offer a VM DRaaS solution to its customers, while decreasing RTOs and RPOs from days to hours. With the help of multi-tenancy, the company saves time and resources and no longer spins dedicated solutions for each of its customers.

“With Nakivo Backup & Replication, we reduced our management times around troubleshooting and upgrades. Previously, we had different solutions for different hypervisors, but Nakivo brought our current VM DRaaS service into a single pane of glass,” says Rhys.

About Cloud Direct
It helps organizations adopt Microsoft cloud. Since 2003, it has helped 4,000 organizations move their IT to the cloud. They are a direct gold Microsoft cloud services provider  partner. They hold ISO 27001:2013 (for security) and ISO 20000 (for service). At 75%, their Net Promoter Score is world-class. 24/7 support ensures continual service delivery.