Global Data Systems

Joe Young has seen some big changes in the data backup space since he founded Global Data Systems (GDS) in 1991. In fact, when the IT service provider started offering disaster recovery as a service in 2005, there weren’t many technology solutions available. He had to piece together multiple products to create his own solution.

As the backup industry evolved, GDS evaluated several solutions and chose what seemed to be the best software option at the time. While it worked well in a virtualized data center environment and was a good fit for large enterprises, it was too clunky and expensive for the company’s SMB customers, which Young says range in size from 20 seats to 800 seats. To meet the needs of these clients, GDS needed a purpose-built solution that was simple to use and cost-effective. This led to a search for a BDR solution provider that offered a local backup appliance in conjunction with cloud backup. “The solution we chose had some nice features, such as auto failover, but over time we discovered issues with the system’s stability and reliability,” says Young.

“We started conducting weekly tests on our SMB customers’ backups, and we experienced enough failed restores to realize we had to start looking elsewhere. After working with our backup provider’s engineering team and discovering they didn’t have a solution, our decision was further confirmed.”

Barracuda MSP: The Next Evolution in BDR

GDS evaluated several BDR vendors and their solutions before selecting Barracuda MSP. “I liked the fact that Barracuda was making a strong push into the managed services market with the acquisition of Intronis [now Barracuda MSP],” Young says. “From a product standpoint, Barracuda’s backup appliance had all the features and capabilities I was looking for; plus, it was a much bigger company than others I had looked at, which made me feel good about its stability.”

From the beginning, Young found that the Barracuda MSP support team was easier to work with than his previous BDR vendor. “Not only do they provide us with evaluation devices, but they assist our technicians with training and testing,” he says. “For new clients, Barracuda MSP helps our team with initial seeding, so we don’t have to upload an entire data set over the wire. Plus, any time we call them with a question, we’re able to get in touch with a knowledgeable engineer right away.”

Young says the flexibility of the Barracuda MSP sales model is another positive differentiator. “One of our government clients has a policy of paying for all equipment and licensing upfront, whereas most of our other clients prefer a lower monthly fixed cost. Plus, each appliance comes with image and file replication to the cloud and flexible data retention at a fixed price, so we don’t have to keep track of how many gigabytes of data each client is using and alter their bills each month.”

The ease of management with Barracuda MSP has proven to be another big differentiator, says Young. “We can log in to the partner portal and see all the devices we’re managing from one screen, which cuts down our BDR management time significantly. It used to take nearly eight hours a day to test and troubleshoot backups, and now we spend less than an hour a day.”

Ransomware is no match for Barracuda Backup - MSP

Since switching to Barracuda MSP, Young says he hasn’t encountered any catastrophic situations requiring disaster recovery, but he did have a situation come up that put the Barracuda Backup – MSP appliance to the test.

“One of our customers got infected with ransomware,” he says. “Within an hour, we were able to quarantine the infected machine and roll back their system to a pre-infected state with almost no noticeable impact on the client’s productivity. This was a much different experience than we went through with another customer who did not have our Barracuda MSP BDR solution and got hit with a similar ransomware virus. They were down a couple of days while we rebuilt their server, and they ended up losing a week’s worth of data, which cost them tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity. For a fraction of that cost, they could have had the protection and peace of mind that comes with a Barracuda MSP BDR solution. It’s a lot less expensive in the long run — and a lot less drama.”