Incyte Diagnostics Accelerates Clinical Data Backup by 95% Using Druva on AWS

Incyte Diagnostics uses Druva to protect and back up critical clinical data 95 percent faster than its legacy solution, enabling it to direct company effort and time more efficiently. Druva, an AWS Advanced Technology Partner, helped Incyte implement Druva Phoenix for scalable, all-in-one backup, disaster recovery, and archival storage.

For more than 60 years, Incyte Diagnostics has provided diagnostic pathology services across the Pacific Northwest. The organization offers blood draws and other specimen collection procedures at three laboratories, delivering results to clinicians and patients throughout the region.

Incyte must perform critical data backups daily, including the storage of digital pathology scans. However, the organization’s previous solution struggled to efficiently back up Incyte’s VMware virtual servers and Microsoft SQL servers. “Backing up our data was a very manual process that took multiple hours, and our previous solution was challenging to maintain,” says Patrick Simpson, lead infrastructure engineer for Incyte Diagnostics. Incyte had to back up data to a single server array and use separate software tools to upload it. “We only have two of us here to manage the entire IT environment, and we needed to focus on new company initiatives,” Simpson says. As a result, Incyte could not back up critical data as often as needed, making it difficult to comply with industry data retention requirements.

For assistance, Incyte turned to Druva, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Advanced Technology Partner. Druva helps deliver data protection and management for the cloud era. Built on AWS and offered as a service, Druva’s products are designed to reduce the cost and complexity of data protection, while increasing cyber resilience and accelerating cloud-based projects. “Druva offers a simple web-based interface, so we knew we wouldn’t have to be AWS experts to use it,” Simpson says. “We also liked the idea that we could use the solution for our future disaster recovery needs.”

Incyte implemented Druva Phoenix, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) data protection solution for data center workloads that combines backup, disaster recovery, archival storage, and analytics. Druva Phoenix takes advantage of Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store deduplicated backup data in the cloud, reducing impact on bandwidth and improving backup speed while minimizing cloud storage costs. The solution also uses Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive to store and archive older data. Once stored in Amazon S3, Druva Phoenix can tier data across cold and hot storage, further reducing associated costs.

With Druva, Incyte Diagnostics eliminated its manual processes and drastically reduced the amount of time required for data backup. “We reduced our backup time by 95 percent because of the simplicity and automation of Druva Phoenix,” says Simpson. “We can now do data backups more frequently, helping us increase compliance with data protection regulations. Restoring our Microsoft SQL and VMware servers is now a very simple process.”

Saving time on data backups, Incyte Diagnostics can now allocate more resources to support new IT projects. For example, the company is opening a new laboratory and plans to modernize its network infrastructure. “Previously, backing up and restoring critical data was a lot of work for IT,” Simpson says. “Now, using Druva Phoenix, we have freed up time to focus on other key business priorities, like replacing aging software and infrastructure and upgrading servers.”

Incyte also benefits from the security features of Druva Cloud Platform. “Security is more important than ever to our customers, and it is a core part of the Druva architecture,” explains Stephen Manley, chief technical officer, Druva. “Cloud backup with Druva provides customers with multiple layers of access and data security that exceeds what customers could deliver either in cloud or on-premises. Druva not only increases the reliability and security of backup, but also streamlines recovery in the event of ransomware intrusion. We help protect our customers’ critical data and provide peace of mind.”

Druva will continue to work with Incyte to identify new data backup and restore opportunities. Manley concludes, “Incyte has been a great partner, and we are excited to keep working together as we enhance our solutions that protect, manage, and recover the data our customers need to run their business.”

Incyte Diagnostics, a leader in anatomic and clinical pathology, combines expert interpretation with the latest technology to deliver the best results for clinicians and patients. Incyte Diagnostics employs about 50 pathologists with subspecialty training in fields including dermatopathology, molecular genetic pathology, neuropathology, and urologic pathology.