Burgess & Niple Expands Use of Druva and Accesses $10M Backed Data Resiliency Guarantee

Burgess & Niple (B&N) is a nationally-recognized engineering and architecture design firm in the United States. At B&N, every project starts with a team of creative, highly skilled people who are eager to learn and committed to solving clients’ challenges.

When Rod Dickerson accepted the role of Chief Technology Officer at engineering and architecture design firm Burgess & Niple (B&N), his primary focus was to integrate technology that would support the adapting and flexible workforce.

The IT team manages a central location along with 27 remote offices across 12 states – all connected via a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN). The team is responsible for 100 VMware virtual machines (VMs) and 400 virtual desktops. 

B&N is moving toward a cloud-first strategy, and staff already take advantage of SaaS applications from Autodesk and Bentley. They also use Computer Aided-Design (CAD) applications requiring graphics cards the team has on its VDI hosts. 

But Dickerson soon realized the backup and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be improved. At the time, the team relied on SAN-based replication with tapes that ran from the replicated site before being shipped off-site.

“It was time consuming for the team, to say the least,” Dickerson said. “It also made people nervous about the potential for data loss or corruption. We had a site-to-site disaster recovery plan, but we didn't have a regional type failover capability.”

In addition, the B&N team was relying on Microsoft’s native capabilities to protect and restore their Microsoft 365 data. Dickerson knew this came with several limitations including Microsoft’s 90-day retention policy. This was an issue for B&N, specifically in regards to the retention requirements they must adhere to for client data.

In 2020 Dickerson turned to AWS Marketplace, a digital catalog of ISV offerings that helps decision-makers find, test, buy, and deploy solutions that fit their business needs. After starting research through AWS Marketplace, he uncovered several solutions, including Veeam, Datrium, and Druva.

The Veeam solution was ruled out due to cost and complexity. His team then got a demo of the Datrium replication solution. But it was expensive compared to other options, and Dickerson didn’t see the added value.

He decided to conduct a POC with Druva and shared, ”When we saw Druva at work, it was an easy choice, it’s the ‘Goldilocks’ of backup solutions because it's just the right fit for us. The cost is right, and we get a lot of functionality and value for the cost.”

Fast forward to 2023 – for retention and compliance regulations, Dickerson needed to protect their Microsoft 365 data including OneDrive, Outlook, Sharepoint and Exchange. He immediately turned to Druva to fill the gap, and ended up getting much more than just Microsoft 365 protection. Druva even went above and beyond to add in the advanced security features that weren’t actually in-budget until their next fiscal year.

Dickerson shared, “When Druva showed me the Accelerated Ransomware Recovery tool I immediately saw the value of their advanced security offering.  However, since it wasn't in the current year's budget I was going to proceed without it and put it into next year's budget. The account team knew that I wanted to include this functionality and were happy to be creative on our contract structure to allow for immediate adoption in the event that we had a security incident prior to my having an approved budget. I'm grateful for the Druva team looking after my best interests rather than a transactional sale.”

Now, B&N has the cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery it needs to protect nearly all its data while ensuring business resilience. The team is confident that the 180 terabytes (TBs) of backup data and 500+ Microsoft 365 accounts are secure and easily recoverable in case of accidental deletion, corruption, or ransomware.

“One thing I like about Druva is the immutable nature of the backups. It's completely protected and isolated from our existing environment. So we’re protected against ransomware, file deletion, and corruption. I appreciate Druva’s vision for the technology , and the seamless execution of the solution,” he added.

Dickerson shared, “I think nearly everyone on the infrastructure team was involved in the tape backups before Druva, now it's effectively half of one full-time equivalent. We still monitor backups, of course, and Druva notifies us if there are any issues. But it's not something we have to actively carve out time for. The addition of the Unusual Data Activity (UDA) feature improves this even further, because not only does Druva alert us on backup status, it alerts us if there are dramatic changes in the data it is backing up. This adds another level of confidence to the quality of our backups.”

Another benefit is that B&N is now opted-into the Data Resiliency Guarantee, a $10 million financially backed guarantee ensures their data is always safe and recoverable with Accelerated Ransomware Recovery. B&N experiences total coverage with zero compromises, including protection against five key data risks – cyber risk, human risk, application risk, operational risk, and environmental risk.

“Here’s the best thing about Druva – it just works,” Dickerson said. “I take it for granted now because I don’t have to think about it.”