Case Study: Capita Group PLC

I have installed it on my laptop. It’s simple, fast and totally non-intrusive. Working very smoothly, just as I hoped.Ian Gates, Director of IT, Capita

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Company Brief

Capita is the UK’s leading business process outsourcing (BPO) and professional services company engaged in delivering back office administration and front office customer contact services to private and public sector organizations across the UK and Ireland.

With revenues of over $4B US and a total employee base of 36,000, a significant number of Capita’s UK staff either works from home or travels regularly. Capita felt the need to deploy a scalable backup solution for its users, which would allow data to be backed up securely and centrally to an enterprise data center over its remote access VPN.

Business Case

The Challenge

Office and remote laptop users at Capita were unable to securely backup their critical data. A secure and scalable backup solution featuring low impact on system performance was crucial to fulfilling their backup needs.

Capita encountered a number of problems with its previous laptop and PC backup solution, including:

  • Lack of scalability resulting in inability to keep pace with growing storage needs
  • Degraded performance of user laptops and desktops
  • Security of data during remote backup

“Our security policies ruled out the use of local backup devices. We needed a secure but low-overhead networked solution”, said Ian Gates, Director of Group IT at Capita.

Supporting the remote users at Capita was another critical concern. “Over 40% of our users work remotely, hence I was concerned about user adoption, policy management and troubleshooting,” added Terry Walton, Senior Technician at Capita.

After working with several vendors to find the right backup solution, Capita selected Druva inSync. Some of the features that Capita considered critical for its laptop backup solution included:

  • Non-intrusive backups
  • Minimal bandwidth usage and throttling
  • Secure backups over WAN/3G connections for remote workers
  • Scale of storage for handling critical data growth
  • Centralized administration

Fact File

  • Laptop users: 10,000+
  • Avg. Data per user: 6 GB
  • Data Composition: Emails, Office documents
  • Daily increment in data volumes: 5-7%
  • Annual growth rate of data volumes: 50-60%

With Druva inSync, Capita was able to completely automate laptop backup within the enterprise over LAN, VPN and WAN. The simple interface helped easy adoption, while data deduplication technology reduced the overheads, making backups almost invisible. Using Druva inSync, office and remote laptop users at Capita enjoy fast, secure backups and save storage space without compromising user performance.

Data Loss History

Office and remote laptop users at Capita experienced loss of critical data due to:

  • Data loss and leakage during backup and restore
  • Loss, theft or misplacement of laptop while travelling
  • Erroneous deletion of data

Druva inSync Deployment

Druva inSync helped Capita to fully automate laptop backups for local and remote users – simply and easily. Centralized deployment, secure backups and in-built scalability addressed Capita’s critical needs from a backup solution.

Druva inSync features patent-pending Data Deduplication technology, which means faster backups and 90% bandwidth and storage savings for laptop users at Capita. WAN Optimization ensures that there is no downtime. Military-grade security of backups over LAN/WAN/VPN ensures that Capita’s data security concerns are fully addressed.

Implementation Details (Phase 1)

  • PCs Backed Up: 6000
  • Backup Servers: 3
  • Avg. Data per PC: 6 GB
  • Retention Policy: 30 Days
  • Network: LAN, VPN and WAN
  • Data Deduplication: 71%
  • Avg. Incremental Backup Time: 7 minutes

The Results

  • Storage Savings: By deploying inSync Capita achieved disk space savings of 71%.
  • Invisible Backups Make for an Enhanced User Experience Druva inSync allows backups at convenient times. “I have installed it on my laptop. It’s simple, fast and totally non-intrusive. Working very smoothly, just as I hoped,” said Gates.
  • Simple Installation, Low Maintenance Druva inSync has a simple 20- minute setup and low maintenance needs, allowing easy adoption.
  • Military Grade Security to Prevent Data Loss and Leakage: Druva inSync features military grade security, which makes backup and restore bullet proof. Client-triggered backups and SSL encryption ensure that the data is always secure on wire. Adequate authentication systems and on-server encryption prevent even the administrator from tampering the data.