Located in France, ALTIR (the Lorraine Association for the Treatment of Renal Insufficiency) is a non-profit healthcare organization. Their charter is to develop and provide treatments for patients with kidney disease. They also raise public awareness and promote research, study, and treatment on renal insufficiency.
ALTIR has 180 employees in 13 regional branches throughout Lorraine, France. These branches offer more than 600 patients dialysis services near their homes.
ALTIR relied on on-premises storage solutions to store their backup data. Ivan Fombaron, IT project manager at ALTIR, is responsible for all projects related to the resiliency of ALTIR infrastructure and applications.
As a healthcare provider, it’s crucial that data be available at all times. However, because Fombaron didn’t have external support, maintaining ALTIR’s servers was a time-consuming effort that sometimes resulted in service interruptions. Fombaron reflected: “We have doctors who need to check data in case of critical health problems, therefore we must be sure of data integrity and availability."
Because they managed everything in-house, the team spent a lot of time maintaining backup and recovery operations. For example, database and Microsoft 365 restorations were especially tedious. Fombaron explained, “Restores previously required several intermediate operations such as retrieving the data, then moving it to the relevant server, and performing the restore.” And when they ran out of room for storing backups, the team had to add hardware resources. Fombaron explained the complicated process, “Using hardware required us to make orders, quotes, technical interventions, dedicating technicians, sometimes involving service interruptions."
Of course, another challenge Fombaron faced was security. Knowing that certain events can be critical for healthcare organizations, putting their operations on hold for several days was not an option, and he was anxious to find a way to restore data in the shortest time possible.
Fombaron learned about Druva through ALTIR’s technology partnership with SCC. They also found Druva in the AWS marketplace, which was an easy way for them to purchase and an added layer of credibility.
When ALTIR brought in the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud, they saw the benefits of adopting the comprehensive platform of solutions. With just one vendor, they’re now able to protect their end users' Microsoft 365 accounts, data center data, and AWS workloads, all through one pane of glass and with a single budget line item.
Previously, the team relied on Microsoft’s native capabilities, but there were often issues with restores and the retention policies put in place. With Druva, the team is empowered with the scale, simplicity, and functionality they expect from SaaS — with automated backups, quick and easy restores and custom retention policies to meet their needs and fill the gaps in native Microsoft 365.
The team has been able to save significant time on the daily maintenance of their backup environment. Fombaron reports, “Druva allows us to save time by simplifying restoration within the console. We received a detailed report of the backups on a daily basis, we get insight into the volume of data and the time it took." The Druva architecture even makes it easier to perform tasks such as database restoration.
Fombaron also said, “Maintaining operational conditions of our backup solutions is now automated, with Druva allowing us to free up this time and use it on actions that add more value to the team, rather than maintenance." The team is able to make sure the data is always available to the doctors they support. According to Fombaron, “Druva allows us to get closer to 100% availability and makes us feel more comfortable."
Druva also provides peace of mind to the ALTIR team. Fombaron explains, “From a security standpoint, we aren’t worried about losing data in the event of an attack. We’ve also conducted tests which allow us to be sure that our data can be easily restored quickly with 100% integrity.”
Druva’s intuitive interface offered the team a seamless experience for managing data, enabling Fombaron to define and enforce data protection rules with customizable policies across all backups and the flexibility to customize these rules as needed. He added, “From customizable retention policies to single-click restores, Druva equips us with the tools needed to efficiently manage our data lifecycle and always remain compliant with French and EU standards.”
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