Veeam SAP-certified backup drives digital transformation for Hoa Phat Group, saving $45,000 in IT costs annually

HPG has the capacity to produce 8.5 million tons of crude steel annually, making it the largest steel manufacturer in Southeast Asia. HPG’s goal is to become one of the 50 largest steel manufacturers in the world.

“To achieve our goal, we began a digital transformation to align our business processes with technology,” said Mr. Phan Ngoc Lam, Head of the IT Department at HPG. “We’re building competitiveness by optimizing IT.”

HPG worked with long-time business partner CMC Technology and Solution (CMC TS), a leading technology solution and service provider, to create and implement a digital transformation strategy that synchronizes the IT environment with all stages of steel production. One of the challenges was finding an SAP-certified backup solution to protect SAP S/4HANA, an enterprise resource planning system that HPG planned to deploy.

“We were using several proprietary backup solutions at the time, but they weren’t SAP-certified, and if SAP S/4HANA isn’t backed up properly, steel production could be interrupted,” said Mr. Phouc Pham, Viet, Deputy of the IT Department at Hoa Phat Dung Quat Steel Joint Stock Company, which oversees HPG’s largest steel manufacturing plant — Hoa Phat Dung Quat Iron and Steel Complex.

“That wasn’t the only challenge,” he continued. “The backup solutions were complex and decentralized, and they didn’t provide features for business continuity such as Continuous Data Protection (CDP), ransomware protection and high-speed data recovery. They also didn’t provide monitoring and alerting, so our administrators spent hundreds of hours each month managing backup.”

Mr. Phouc said HPG considered four replacements for data protection: Avamar, Commvault, Veritas and Veeam Availability Suite, but only one solution offered everything HPG required for digital transformation and steel production.

Veeam provides SAP-certified backup and CDP to support HPG’s digital transformation and steel production. Veeam increases ransomware protection, reduces recovery time by 300% and saves $45,000 in IT operating costs annually — in addition to 800 administrative hours monthly.

“Veeam supports our goal to become one of the largest steelmakers in the world by protecting SAP S/4HANA so it’s always available for steel manufacturing,” Mr. Lam said.

Veeam backs up 64 TB of data across 140 virtual machines (VMs) and 24 physical machines in two locations and replicates between them for disaster recovery (DR). If disaster strikes, Veeam CDP ensures VM replicas are in a ready-to-start state. If ransomware strikes, Veeam protects backups from malicious intent or data deletion via a hardened Linux repository. Veeam also detects the initial stages of a ransomware attack by monitoring for suspicious activity.

“If we need to recover data for any reason, recovery takes minutes, not hours like the previous backup solutions,” Mr. Lam said. “Instant VM Recovery and Veeam Explorers for Oracle and SQL Server reduce recovery time by 300%.”

Mr. Lam said Veeam is affordable and requires less management time too.

“We save $45,000 in IT operating costs each year because Veeam is costeffective, and we save 800 administrative hours each month because monitoring and alerting help us identify and resolve difficulties before they become problems.”

Mr. Phouc said choosing Veeam has given the IT Department peace of mind.

“Veeam provides comprehensive backup and recovery, so if something goes wrong we know we can quickly restore data to ensure the business continues to operate,” he explained. “We also know we can extend Veeam data protection to the cloud if that is in our future.”

Veeam helps enterprises like HPG accelerate cloud adoption, actualize cloud and achieve DR and compliance goals through long-term retention and disaster readiness. Veeam protects any workload, anywhere.

• Provides SAP-certified backup for digital transformation and steel production
  “Veeam modernized data protection and became an integral part of our digital transformation and steel production,” Mr. Lam said.
• Delivers CDP, boosts ransomware protection and reduces recovery time by 300%
  “One of the features HPG administrators love is Veeam DataLabs,” Mr. Lam said. “They can verify the recoverability of backups and replicas in an isolated environment, and if they need to recover fast, they choose Instant VM Recovery.”
• Saves $45,000 in IT operating costs annually and 800 administrative hours monthly
  “Veeam is a cost-effective and user-friendly solution, saving our company time and money,” Mr. Lam said.