Pyramid Healthcare chooses Druva as its SaaS data protection partner to ensure HIPAA compliance

Pyramid Healthcare, Inc. is part of Pyramid Healthcare – an integrated system of behavioral healthcare programs, employing a staff of 2,800+ and operating 100+ facilities including six schools across the eastern United States, offering a variety of treatment and recovery services for adults and teens. The company is headquartered in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Pyramid Healthcare is dedicated to helping people beat addiction. With a wide network of facilities, the company depends on technology to help keep operations running smoothly.

Pyramid’s IT team always rose to the challenge, but a series of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) added complexity to its IT environment. The team was tasked with managing an increasingly complicated infrastructure, which included seven different email systems for a staff of more than 2,800.

At the time, the team managed two data centers with NAS file servers and VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs) running business-critical applications like SQL databases, its transportation system, and Microsoft Active Directory. Data was backed up using a mix of on-premises systems – NAS for databases and Veeam for the VMware virtual machines. The complexity of the backup environment made data visibility a challenge, said Larry Bilker, executive vice president and CIO at Pyramid Healthcare, Inc.

“We had to cut costs and complexity across the board,” Bilker said. “We needed a way to consolidate all the backup data so it wasn’t siloed and so time-consuming to manage.”

Bilker and team searched for a single solution to back up the company’s data, including Microsoft 365 accounts, to which it had previously migrated. The team needed a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that could align with the CIO’s cloud-first strategy and scale as the company grew organically and through M&A. And it needed to deliver advanced security and data integrity so Pyramid could maintain compliance with data privacy laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Protected Health Information (PHI).

Bilker brought the challenge to his technology partner, who recommended Druva. But Bilker wanted to be sure it was the right fit, so he compared Druva against other solutions like Zerto, Rubrik, Commvault Metallic, and Veeam.

Not only were the other solutions more expensive than Druva, they couldn’t natively back up all of Pyramid’s existing systems (VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V VMs, NAS file servers, and SaaS applications like Microsoft 365) as Druva did. Bilker conducted a successful proof of concept (POC) with Druva before the company chose Druva and rolled the platform out across VMware and Microsoft VMs and NAS file servers. Then he expanded the use of the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud to back up endpoints for key executives as well as Microsoft 365 (Exchange, Teams, SharePoint) for 2,800+ users.

Almost two years later, Bilker is still confident in his choice. “Druva was an instant fit,” he said. “It was so refreshing to see a SaaS solution with an intuitive and nicely organized interface. We finally have a consolidated, cloud-native data protection solution that supports our entire environment. No other provider could match it.”

Druva makes data management so much easier, said Hugh McClimans, senior system administrator at Pyramid Healthcare Inc. “All I have to do is look at a dashboard, and I know exactly how much storage we’re consuming instantly,” McClimans said. “It’s a big deal for us to have easy access to all of our enterprise backup data.”

Now Pyramid Healthcare can manage backups of all its business-critical data in one place through a single pane of glass. “With the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud, we have one place to go to manage and see backups. That’s a huge change from the more than five different portals we used to have to access,” McClimans said.

“We finally have a clear picture of what’s going on with our backups for all of our enterprise data; there are no surprises,” McClimans said. “I get daily emails from Druva, and if a backup fails, I can see exactly what happened and action it.”

Adopting a SaaS platform has also led to a more than five times reduction in the amount of time the IT team spends managing data because the team is no longer managing five different versions of on-premises backup and DR infrastructure.

And data recovery is just as quick, McClimans added. “I had to restore a VM recently and I did it in five minutes with Druva, which is unbelievable. That’s at least five times faster than our previous solution.”

That capability means peace of mind for Bilker, the CIO. “We’ve proved we can recover data easily – even at a granular level,” he said. “And that means we’re confident we can deliver excellent service to staff and customers while meeting strict compliance regulations like HIPAA and PHI. I honestly rest so much easier knowing our data is safe and stored securely in the cloud.”

Bilker is also confident the solution is future-proof. “We’ve experienced 57% data growth over the last 90 days,” he said. “We know the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud can grow with us as we continue to expand.”