The native backup solution in Microsoft O365 is inadequate for a construction industry trailblazer in Hong Kong, so it looked elsewhere …
One of Asia’s premier construction groups based in Hong Kong, Gammon Construction, is adding to the list of enterprises digitalizing to stay relevant and resilient in these crucial economic times.
As an industry trailblazer, Gammon is pioneering new ways of operating in its drive to be digital. Speed and seamless collaboration are critical enablers of this, with more than 4,000 employees across the region actively collaborating in the Cloud, further spurred by increased remote-working mandates.
With data growth surging, it was clear that critical data and business continuity were at risk as the native backup of O365 could not guarantee 100% data restore during disaster recovery. In addition, the previous backup tools meant days or weeks for a full backup and restore, while retrieval of archived data often needed five days to process.
100% data restore guarantee
Gammon is an early adopter of Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology, which supports its ambition is to digitally-integrate the full construction value chain from planning and design to construction, maintenance and more.
Huge data volumes are generated from each construction project, with a single BIM model going over 100MB, and some even reaching 1GB. Managing data growth at this scale requires a more structured approach to protect critical information assets.
In order to ensure the ability to achieve daily backups of over 500TB of O365 data with data restore and retrieval within hours, the firm pushed ahead on its DX plan to enable an always-on 24/7 operating model. With a more comprehensive data protection strategy, data backup and recovery speeds are optimized, and the solution it selected has guaranteed 100% data restore compared to the native backup feature by Microsoft.
Said Joseph Chan, Senior Manager, Information Security and Operations, Gammon Construction Limited: “Our adoption of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 was timely as the pandemic situation accelerated the need for remote-working and real-time data availability. We are glad that (the solution) takes care of our data in the cloud so we have the resources and confidence to focus on building more innovative solutions that will revolutionize our construction business.”
Remaining a smart digital contractor
The addition of the backup solution for Microsoft O365 complements Gammon’s existing use of the VeeamAvailability Suite for backup and recovery, which has raised IT efficiency levels and improved the firm’s productivity by helping engineering teams quickly retrieve historical data. In the past, the IT team needed at least five days to restore an entire data set from tape archives. Now, they can search for and restore a single file in the database, shortening each restore process to just a few hours.
“By adopting these data protection tools, Gammon has freed up resources for its IT teams to innovate, raise levels of reliance, business continuity and improve protection of critical data against cybersecurity threats. This helps us eliminate the risk of losing access and control over O365 data so that it is always protected and accessible,” Chan added.
With these tools in place, the construction firm is now able to prevent disruptions and provide an ‘always-on’ infrastructure in order to continue to uphold its reputation as a smart digital contractor and an industry pioneer.
