Cloud-Native Cyber Resilience: How Fred Perry Reclaimed 75% of Their Time with Druva

Fred Perry is a British sporting and fashion brand of clothing and accessories, founded by champion British tennis player Fred Perry in 1952.

As a global "cloud-first" organization, Fred Perry’s IT department manages a complex environment spanning public and private cloud hosting, security, and backups. However, their previous reliance on native Microsoft technology for cloud infrastructure left significant gaps in their data protection strategy.

The team struggled with the 90-day retention limitations inherent in native Microsoft tooling. With no "magic number" for how long business stakeholders might need to retain information, the IT department was forced to manage data in disparate silos with the goal of keeping it indefinitely—a process that was becoming increasingly difficult to scale.

Furthermore, the team needed a solution that was accessible across all engineering levels. Their existing hybrid options required senior-level expertise for even basic tasks, creating operational bottlenecks and pulling high-level engineers away from strategic project work.

Fred Perry partnered with Bytes to evaluate the market, seeking a true SaaS-based partner that could offer a "single pane of glass" for their growing workloads. While they considered other competitors, Druva’s cloud-native simplicity and cost-efficiency stood out as the superior choice.

Today, Druva provides Fred Perry with an air-gapped, isolated backup environment hosted in the AWS cloud—completely independent from their primary Azure infrastructure. The implementation was seamless, with Microsoft 365 and Azure VM data protection going live in just a few weeks.

The team stated, “Backups are a BAU (Business as Usual) task for us; the less time we spend in the console, the better. Druva just works, and that reclaimed time is invaluable to our department."

By leveraging Druva’s automated tagging, the team ensured that new Azure VMs are automatically enrolled in backup policies the moment they are built. This "set it and forget it" approach has eliminated the risk of human error and removed the need for manual backup checks.

Since adopting Druva, the Fred Perry IT department has transformed its backup operations from a manual burden into a streamlined, background process.

• 75% Time Savings: By automating redundant tasks and eliminating complex configurations, the team has reclaimed 75% of the time previously spent managing Microsoft native tools.
• Empowered Junior Engineers: The intuitive interface allows junior engineers to perform restores with confidence, freeing senior staff for high-value architecture and security projects.
• Robust Cyber Resilience: With Microsoft 365, and Azure backup data isolated in Druva’s AWS storage and Entra ID backups now included, the organization is safeguarded against ransomware and internal data loss
• Scalable Growth: Druva’s consumption-based model allows the brand to scale effortlessly without worrying about hardware limitations or "clunky" hybrid configurations.

Reflecting on the partnership, the IT department noted: “Druva is robust, simple, and scalable. It’s one less headache to worry about. If it were taken away, it would make our lives complicated again.”