CLOUD
Veeam | September 27, 2022
Veeam Software, the leader in backup, recovery and data management solutions that deliver Modern Data Protection, today announced that HBC, a holding company of investments and businesses that operates at the intersection of technology, retail operations and real estate, has chosen Veeam Availability Suite™ to centralize data protection on premises and across clouds. Veeam helps HBC ensure business continuity, meet internal governance compliance requirements and protect against ransomware. Additionally, HBC saved more than $1 million in a one-time capital expenditure and saves $600,000 in recurring operational expenses annually.
From the fur trade to Fifth Avenue, HBC has been in business for more than 350 years. North America’s longest continually operating company began in 1670 with a royal charter from England to seek a northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean, occupy the lands adjacent to Hudson Bay and set up commerce. Today, HBC is a legend in the retail world. It’s the majority owner of iconic e-commerce companies such as Saks, a leading online destination for luxury fashion, Saks OFF 5TH, a premier luxury off-price e-commerce company and The Bay, a Canadian e-commerce marketplace. HBC’s legacy is providing an unrivaled customer experience.
“To improve upon the customer experience, we began a digital transformation to accelerate our e-commerce business, Operating multiple data centers didn’t make sense in our customer-centric world, so we adopted a multi-cloud strategy.”
Ope Bakare, Chief Technical Officer, HBC
As HBC moved IT systems and data to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure, Bakare said he and his colleagues discovered something unfortunate about the legacy backup solution. It began to show signs of failing. “Failing backups can lead to downtime, and downtime can lead to big problems in retail,” he explained. “Downtime can drastically impact a company’s logistics ecosystem, leading to a domino effect that can break the business. We have a complex logistics ecosystem, so keeping it healthy and functioning is an absolute priority. An hour of downtime could cost our company millions of dollars in logistics and shipping.”
Matthew Pick, Senior Director of Cloud Architecture at HBC, said there was another challenge with the legacy backup solution. “It was inflexible and didn’t integrate with our multi-cloud workloads. We began using backup tools provided by AWS and Azure, but they came with constraints like operational overhead, which is time consuming. We needed one flexible, powerful and scalable solution to protect every workload everywhere.”
Veeam backs up 80 TB of data across more than 2,000 instances in AWS and Azure to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Azure Blob Storage. Veeam also back up 40 TB of data across 14 physical machines on premises to Dell EMC Data Domain.
“One of the things I love most about Veeam is operational consistency,” Bakare explained. “We can protect every asset wherever it resides in a consistent way. Veeam takes the complication and noise out of data protection, allowing our engineers to focus on innovating for the business rather than worrying about backups.”
Pick said operational consistency also allows for data retention to be a shared responsibility across teams. “Operational consistency places the onus on each business unit that wants to protect data,” he continued. “If they tag their VMs correctly, Veeam will back them up, without question.”
Pick is referring to Veeam’s fully customizable policies that automate backup and data lifecycle management. He said policy-based automation also provides an easy way for the IT team to show each business unit how much data protection will cost. “Veeam enables us to have more productive conversations with each unit so we can set expectations appropriately. We also have visibility into our overall spend, and this is where the Veeam Universal License comes in handy. We can move licenses across business units and workloads to maximize our spend.”
Bakare added that policy-based automation also ensures business continuity, supports internal governance compliance requirements and protects against ransomware. “We had been going through a process to validate and close gaps in our business continuity strategy, so Veeam’s ability to use tagging for cloud backup was a massive step forward for us. Tagging also ensures internal governance compliance and helps us fight ransomware. Veeam lets us separate our backups from our IT systems with a barrier, so if ransomware strikes our IT systems, our backups are safe.”
Bakare said Veeam saves money, too. “Before we began the cloud migration we were closing in on a hardware and software refresh. Since Veeam is hardware, software and cloud agnostic, we avoided the refresh, saving more than $1 million in a one-time capital expenditure and $600,000 in recurring operating expenses annually. That’s a significant savings.”
About Veeam Software
Veeam is the leader in backup, recovery and data management solutions that deliver Modern Data Protection. The company provides a single platform for Cloud, Virtual, Physical, SaaS and Kubernetes environments. Veeam customers are confident their apps and data are protected from ransomware, disaster and harmful actors and always available with the most simple, flexible, reliable and powerful platform in the industry. Veeam protects 450,000 customers worldwide, including 81% of the Fortune 500 and 70% of the Global 2,000. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, with offices in more than 30 countries, Veeam’s global ecosystem includes 35,000+ technology partners, resellers and service providers and alliance partners.
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VMWARE
VMware | November 11, 2022
VMware Explore 2022 Europe Today at VMware Explore 2022 Europe, Equinix, Inc. the world's digital infrastructure company, and VMware, Inc. announced an expanded global relationship to deliver new digital infrastructure and multi-cloud services.
Together, the companies unveiled VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal®, a new distributed cloud service that will deliver a more performant, secure, and cost-effective cloud option to support enterprise applications. The service will combine VMware-managed and supported cloud infrastructure as a service with Equinix’s interconnected, global Bare Metal as a Service offering. The service will extend customers’ cloud environments into distributed metro locations to satisfy business-critical performance demands at the edge while enabling them to preserve the integrity of enterprise workloads.
“Customers to date have lacked a suitable cloud option that combines on-premises security and control with high performance, data locality, and low overall TCO,” said Dave McCarthy, Research Vice President, Cloud and Edge Infrastructure Services at IDC. “For mission-critical applications that rely on low-latency and high-performance network bandwidth, the default has been to retain workloads on-premises or perform real-time needs, such as data processing, at branch office or metro locations. With their combined strengths, Equinix and VMware are well positioned to deliver a distributed cloud service that will address the demands of enterprise applications where latency, performance, security, and data locality are key drivers.”
VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal will be ideal for distributed cloud use cases including smart cities, video analytics, game development, real-time financial market trading, retail POS, and a variety of use cases using IoT and ML/Inference. The service will include VMware Cloud for consistent multi-cloud infrastructure and operations and Equinix Metal, an automated bare metal and interconnection offering delivered as a service across Equinix’s global International Business Exchange (IBX) footprint. VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal will provide private, low-latency access to both private and public cloud environments—as well as thousands of IT and network providers—via Equinix Fabric® interconnection. This built-in private connectivity will deliver multi-cloud flexibility and choice with instantaneous connectivity to all public cloud services. Customers will be able to purchase the VMware Cloud software as a service from VMware and the Bare Metal as a Service capacity from Equinix.
“As companies accelerate their digital transformation by adopting hybrid multi-cloud architectures, they require consistent application experiences that span private and public clouds, and reach from the core to the edge,” said Zachary Smith, Global Head of Edge Infrastructure Services at Equinix. “We are pleased to partner with VMware to provide an on-demand, dedicated cloud infrastructure solution that can be deployed globally. Customers benefit from secure connections to their critical private or on-prem environments and also to the thousands of clouds, networks and other ecosystem participants that come together at Equinix.”
“Businesses across industries are seeking to become cloud smart by matching enterprise application needs to the best cloud environments. This approach will enable them to benefit from high performance and consistent infrastructure with low TCO, VMware and Equinix are uniquely positioned to co-innovate on a distributed cloud service that extends VMware Cloud to new locations to provide application choice and flexibility and accelerate cloud transformation for all enterprises.”
Narayan Bharadwaj, Vice President, Cloud Solutions at VMware
Equinix and VMware: Cloud-Smart Innovation for Thousands of Customers Globally
Over nearly a decade, Equinix and VMware have delivered solutions that meet business demands for fast, more secure, and consistent multi-cloud infrastructure. Thousands of mutual customers are accelerating their enterprise cloud transformation by running VMware workloads in Equinix data centers around the world. Equinix owns and operates a network of more than 240 data centers in 71 major metro areas around the world and serves as a transit hub, enabling secure network connections across private and public clouds. This has made Equinix an ideal digital infrastructure foundation for the multi-cloud enterprise. VMware Cloud is the industry’s first and only multi-cloud Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) that runs as a native service in 100+ regions spanning major public clouds as well as 4,000+ partner clouds, in private data centers and at the edge.
About Equinix
Equinix is the world's digital infrastructure company. Digital leaders harness Equinix's trusted platform to bring together and interconnect foundational infrastructure at software speed. Equinix enables organizations to access all the right places, partners, and possibilities to scale with agility, speed the launch of digital services, deliver world-class experiences, and multiply their value, while supporting their sustainability goals.
About VMware
VMware is a leading provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control. As a trusted foundation to accelerate innovation, VMware software gives businesses the flexibility and choice they need to build the future. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is committed to building a better future through the company’s 2030 Agenda. For more information, please visit www.vmware.com/company.
VMware and Explore are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions. This article may contain hyperlinks to non-VMware websites that are created and maintained by third parties who are solely responsible for the content on such websites.
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VMWARE
VMware | September 22, 2022
VMware, Inc. announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. as a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for SD-WAN. Gartner recognized VMware for its ability to execute and completeness of vision. Previously known as the Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure, this year’s report marks the fifth consecutive year that Gartner has recognized VMware as a Leader in SD-WAN.
Architected with the idea that the cloud is the network, VMware SD-WAN provides unparalleled reliability and simplicity in securely connecting users from the branch or home to cloud, SaaS, or traditional applications. These benefits stem in part from VMware and its partners investment in more than 150 points of presence worldwide that have high-speed, low-latency connections to major cloud and SaaS providers.
“VMware is honored to be recognized again by Gartner as a Leader in SD-WAN, We feel our extensive deployments of more than 600,000 branches across 18,000 customers have given us the ability to continually adapt to the evolving needs of SD-WAN customers. The unique insights gleaned from what enterprises need near- and long-term are a big reason why, we believe, we continue to be a leader in SD-WAN.”
Craig Conners, general manager, SASE, VMware
VMware SD-WAN is a part of VMware SASE. By delivering cloud networking and cloud security services with VMware SASE, customers can achieve:
With a cloud-first approach, VMware SD-WAN delivers a more secure, reliable, and optimal path to SaaS and IaaS providers via a unique global network of cloud-hosted gateways, allowing customers to simplify their path to cloud transformation. VMware provides customers and partners the option to host gateways themselves as well to take advantage of their own SaaS and IaaS on-ramps in a more efficient way than other SD-WAN providers.
Broad security options including an ICSA-certified branch firewall, third-party security workloads, and configurable business policies that direct traffic to the cloud or data center for better protection against attacks at all levels. Additionally, VMware provides Security Service Edge (SSE) capabilities to help customers better secure access to all web and cloud services as well as locally hosted applications.
Assured application performance with user access and an optimized experience for mission-critical apps, even during degraded network conditions.
Simplified operations that include cloud-based gateways and an orchestration platform to eliminate the management overhead normally required to maintain these components. Additionally, VMware Edge Network Intelligence provides true visibility and analytics into networks, end user and IoT devices. AIOps capabilities combine machine learning, AI, big data, and self-healing technologies to help network operations teams further simplify IT management.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
This document was renamed from Magic Quadrant of WAN Edge Infrastructure to Magic Quadrant for SD-WAN in 2022.
About VMware
VMware is a leading provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control. As a trusted foundation to accelerate innovation, VMware software gives businesses the flexibility and choice they need to build the future. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is committed to building a better future through the company’s 2030 Agenda.
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