90% Time Savings and Global Scalability: EGYM’s Cloud-First Transformation with Druva

EGYM is a smart fitness technology system that uses connected strength training machines and RFID wristbands to provide personalized, gamified workouts. By automatically adjusting resistance and tracking progress, EGYM ensures efficient, result-driven workout experiences for users at YMCAs and other global fitness facilities. Additionally, EGYM operates as a Corporate fitness provider named WELLPASS.

As EGYM expanded its global footprint and operations, its data protection requirements began to exceed the capacity of its internal resources. According to Matthias Albrecht, Head of Systems and Infrastructure, the company had previously depended on an in-house solution consisting of personalized scripts to back up vCenter environments to local NAS devices and Google Cloud storage.

While sufficient for a small company, this manual approach lacked visibility and auditability, and was not scalable for an enterprise growing into new markets. "It was basically what I built," Albrecht explained. "But we came to a point where we wanted to secure our Google environment, Entra ID, and Salesforce. This manual process was no longer a viable path forward."

The risk of a "single point of failure"—where only one person understood the backup code—also posed a significant risk to business continuity and their overall cybersecurity posture.

EGYM, a cloud-first organization, was seeking a unified platform to replace five disparate solutions – a combination of homegrown and native tools – and proactively improve its cyber resilience across their growing data estate. After evaluating a number of competitors, EGYM chose Druva as the best fit for all of their requirements, noting especially its superior support for their core Google Workspace environment.

The deployment of Druva was remarkably fast. Albrecht stated, “We flew through the Druva setup guide during the proof of concept, configuring multiple tools in just a few hours.” EGYM gained a single pane of glass for protecting Google Workspace, Salesforce, hybrid workloads (VMware VMs), and Microsoft Entra ID. Additionally, by seamlessly integrating Druva with their existing CrowdStrike Next-Gen SIEM environment, EGYM moved beyond reactive backups to a proactive data defense model.

Albrecht praised the platform's simplicity and transparency, stating, "I don’t mind scripting, but with Druva, I don’t even have to do that. Druva doesn’t hide anything important. It's all there and accessible."

By moving to Druva, EGYM transformed data protection from a manual chore into an automated, enterprise-grade operation:

• 90% reduction in administrative burden: Albrecht saves nearly all the time previously spent maintaining scripts. "I basically save all the time because Druva informs me if something went wrong," he noted.

• Rapid implementation: The entire environment was protected in a few hours, with the only "long" part of the process being the initial data sync.

• Multi-Cloud protection: As EGYM grows globally, Druva scales with them and across environments including Azure, Google and AWS.

• Strategic resource reallocation: With data protection becoming a "set and forget" operation, the IT team can accelerate other critical cybersecurity initiatives, such as implementing Atlassian Guard for enhanced protection.

• Faster Threat Detection and Recovery: Leveraging deep visibility and insight into the backup environment alongside CrowdStrike integrations, EGYM can detect cyber threats, anomalies, and data corruption in real-time. This layered defense ensures faster identification and containment of ransomware–significantly reducing recovery time objectives (RTO). 

Albrecht concludes, "I'm truly impressed by how simple Druva is—not just to set up, but also to manage. It's incredibly logical and self-contained."