Veeam’s hybrid cloud approach helps Rizobacter build a sustainable future by eliminating interruptions to its business

The business challenge

To meet global food needs while protecting the planet for future generations, sustainable agriculture is key. Since 1977, Rizobacter has been committed to creating the solutions that deliver on this promise, aiming to provide food security and elevate quality of life for people around the world.

In recent years, Rizobacter has gone through an exciting period of change. The company became part of the Bioceres Crop Solutions group and went public, attracting new investors and forming new strategic alliances. Rizobacter saw its technology requirements evolve alongside its business.

“Sustainability issues have never been more relevant, driving interest in biotechnology for agriculture,” said Francisco Novello, Head of Technology at Rizobacter. “We’re responding both by growing our worldwide operations and collaborating with new partners. To meet the needs of our changing business, we adopted a fresh technology strategy.”

Rizobacter’s IT team was spending too much time on backup procedures and began encountering issues procuring the tapes it previously used to store backup data. At the same time, the company was targeting a move to 100% cloud-based IT infrastructure but found that its previous business continuity measures were failing to keep up.

“Any prolonged downtime or data loss would prevent our business users from working effectively, lengthening time to market for our innovative solutions,” said Novello. “Our existing data protection technology was not meeting the mark in terms of ease of management, scalability or cloud integration. It was consuming resources — both time and money — which would be better spent on developing the business further.”

The Veeam solution

To ensure it could sustain its position at the forefront of agricultural innovation, Rizobacter decided to transform its approach to data protection. The company selected Veeam Backup & Replication to achieve this goal and support its transition to a multi-cloud IT environment.

“We chose Veeam because both suppliers and contacts from our network spoke highly of the technology,” said Novello. “It was also recognized by analysts —including Gartner® — for innovation. I attended Veeam events and was impressed by the features that Veeam Backup & Replication offers, and how easy it is to scale. Another key differentiator for us is the broad and deep range of public cloud integrations and support, which perfectly suit our multi-cloud technology strategy.”

Rizobacter uses Veeam to back up data from 53 instances across on-premises systems and cloud environments, including AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. The company takes hourly snapshots of some data and backs up essential systems at least once per day.

“Today, approximately 90% of our systems are cloud-based, and we’re moving towards our target of 100%,” said Nicholas Balmaceda, Head of Architecture and Solutions at Rizobacter. “Using Veeam, we can accelerate our cloud adoption by managing backups for our hybrid multi-cloud environment from a single console, which is a significant advantage.”

With central visibility of backups, Rizobacter gained better control of resource utilization. The company estimates it was able to save 40% on the project to overhaul its backup policy thanks to the transparency of Veeam technology.

“An unexpected benefit of using Veeam was the proactive insight it gives us into what resources we’re using and their associated costs,” said Frank Toledo, Head of Architecture and Innovation at Rizobacter. “We can see in real time whether a particular cloud environment is cost-effective for a specific workload. Because adjusting backups in Veeam is so simple, we can make any necessary changes with ease.”

Rizobacter integrated Veeam technology with AWS to help meet its compliance obligations. The company has also augmented its cybersecurity strategy using restore capabilities from Veeam.

“When we went public as part of the Bioceres Crop Solutions group, we faced new audit requirements,” said Novello. “We now have to prove certain levels of business continuity and availability and with Veeam, it’s simple for us to do so. Veeam technology is now a key part of our cybersecurity response since we can use it to restore data quickly and comprehensively in the event of an attack, like ransomware.”

The results

• Cuts time spent on backup management for Rizobacter’s hybrid multicloud environment by 60%
  Rizobacter can choose the best platform for each workload, confident that the Veeam technology will integrate seamlessly to provide exceptional data protection, which is easy to manage.
• Contributes to 100% business continuity and 98% IT system availability
  “Since deploying Veeam, we’ve been able to focus on innovation nonstop thanks to 100% business continuity,” said Novello. “By enabling reliable access to data for business users, we empower them to push the boundaries of sustainable agriculture.”
• Reduces data restore times by 80% to seconds, helping Rizobacter’s employees cut time-to-market for new solutions
  “We’ve saved countless person-hours on rolling back our systems when data has been accidentally deleted or lost for other reasons,” said Balmaceda. “The Veeam interface is so intuitive that any authorized user can use it to restore data in a couple of clicks, allowing Rizobacter to focus on our core mission.”