Elligo Expedites Trial Research Without Ever Worrying About Backups and Data Protection

Elligo Health Research was founded in 2016 to expedite health research for things like COVID-19 vaccines, Alzheimer’s, and cancer research. Their proprietary technology and direct access to diverse patients from more than 115 hospitals and major health systems, 200 healthcare-based sites, and 100 research- based sites are key to speeding up the time to a trial. In 2020, they further expanded operations with the acquisition of Root Health and ClinEdge.

Andrew Hatch, Executive Director of Technology at Elligo, is responsible for the operations and maintenance of all employee-facing resources and services, including hardware, software, and SaaS service solutions. The company operates completely in the cloud. When Hatch began working at Elligo, there were no centralized or consistent backup processes in place. The executives had a laundry list of security controls they wanted Hatch to cover. This list included endpoint management, security management, and ransomware protection. Hatch agreed those things were necessary, but asked: “What does our backup solution look like?” No one in the company seemed to know how the health organization managed backup operations. Hatch finally found technical folks who told him: “We don’t need backups. When you have Microsoft or Salesforce, they back up stuff for you, so it’s totally fine.”

Hatch knew that what Microsoft and Salesforce offered was not the same as an air-gapped backup solution. As he put it, “If disaster strikes, you want something that is completely separate.” He immediately added finding an online SaaS backup solution to his executives’ list.

The backup solution Hatch chose would need to fit stringent healthcare industry requirements. For example, the solution would need to retain data for varying periods of time, work with the organization’s HIPAA compliance, as well as be SOC 2 compliant. Another requirement that popped up: Elligo acquired a company that had an on-premises data center; so, in addition to SaaS applications, the solution would need to back up on-premises data as well.

Hatch knew that he didn’t want to repeat the backup experiences he had early in his career, when he had to push carts of tapes around and manage the robot libraries. Hatch describes the tape restore process this way: “It was this Byzantine thing of getting the right 6-digit code tape, putting that in, and then putting the next one in.”

Hatch was introduced to Druva at a previous employer by reseller Trace3. When he arrived at Elligo, Hatch consulted Trace3 to evaluate SaaS-based backup solutions. Druva was an early recommendation, but Hatch did not go ahead without considering a variety of competing solutions.

After evaluating a few solutions that are SaaS-based, or claimed to be, the decision was made to move forward with Druva – no hardware and minimal administration would be key for the team. Additionally, Hatch felt confident he could quickly go through the onboarding process without any assistance.

Elligo chose the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud to protect multiple data sources with a single data protection vendor including hybrid workloads in the data center, Microsoft 365 accounts, and Salesforce data. With a single console, anybody in IT can manage backups, view reports and initiate restores.

Hatch said, “I had one phone call with the Druva integration team. When it was scheduled, I’d already done all the work. They looked at a couple of backups. They gave me some pointers. And I was off to the races within a week.” He was also said, “The restore process with Druva was simple for even the Tier 1 engineers to manage independently, with little to no training.”

When Elligo acquired a company that had an on-premises data center, Druva was used to back up that data. The data was later archived to the cloud. What impressed Hatch about that procedure was the attention he received from his account representative. After Hatch deleted the Druva backups, their sales representative called the next day and asked, “Is everything okay? You lost half of your data. It looks like you deleted it. Was that on purpose?”

That gave Hatch a sense of security because as he puts it, “Druva is monitoring my account and telling me, ‘Hey, we see something unusual. Let’s talk about it.’”

Hatch appreciated how easy it is to use Druva when he thought back to his early days. Druva does one of the things he really wanted: “Automatically backs up new users when I create them and preserve them after they’re deleted.” He only needs to go into Druva when he must do a restore. In fact, his team of five IT professionals only spends about an hour a week managing Druva.

Hatch has even used Druva’s eDiscovery feature at a previous company to comply with a federal government investigation. Even though he was nervous, saying “I delivered it to the lawyer and thought, ‘Boy, I hope Druva makes this look good.’ The lawyers took the file. And said, ‘Thank you. This is perfect.’”

Hatch also uses Druva to provide compliance or audit trails. He said, “Druva is a solution that I can quickly and effortlessly provide detail at any level and institute policy changes on the fly if needed.”

Hatch said that since partnering with Druva, “It’s absolutely huge for myself and our leadership team to know that, with Druva, our backups are covered. Full stop.”