Anheuser-Busch Employees’ Credit Union Toasts Veeam for Impeccable Data Center Migration

The Business Challenge

There are many benefits to working at Anheuser-Busch — the world’s largest beer brewer — but one of the biggest benefits is becoming a member of the Anheuser-Busch Employees’ Credit Union.

The Credit Union is a recognized leader in improving the financial capabilities of the members it serves. All it takes is an initial $5 deposit into a savings account, and members are members for life.

That doesn’t mean they’ll stay members for life. The rapid digitization of banking creates mounting pressure on the financial services industry to improve offerings and stay relevant. The Credit Union competes for customers who demand personalized, predictive and actionable banking services delivered at their convenience.

All financial institutions know digital transformation is necessary for their future success, but many are still building and executing plans. The Credit Union is way ahead of the pack. According to Forrester’s 2018 State of Digital Banking Report, only 55% of banks are currently working on digital transformation, while another 26% plan to start soon. Despite digital transformation being one of the top banking trends for years, only 8% are finished, which means the vast majority of banks are still trying to navigate the execution of this important initiative.

There’s a reason they’re cautious. Digital transformation is complicated. Modernizing data protection is the first step.

“We deployed Veeam several years ago for availability, so we were well on our way,” said David Gossett, director of technical services at the Credit Union.

Next the Credit Union embarked on a project to move the corporate headquarters and data center to a new building. The goal was to create a first-class working environment for employees, provide for faster IT innovation and enhance the high service level that members have come to enjoy and expect.

“The challenge was migrating 130 virtual machines (40 TBs) to the new building with minimal downtime and data loss,” Gossett said. “Downtime and data loss can be devastating — preventing members from opening accounts, applying for loans, withdrawing money with their ATM cards, and paying for merchandise with their debit cards. They expect banking to be a seamless part of their lives, so downtime and data loss could have damaged our reputation and cost us members.”

The Veeam Solution

Veeam Availability Suite supported the Credit Union through every step of the data center migration.

“We migrated on time and on budget — with zero downtime, zero data loss and zero impact on members,” Gossett said. “We couldn’t have done it without Veeam.”

There’s only one thing the IT team would have done differently.

“We would have used Veeam Availability Orchestrator,” Gossett said. “It would have made our migration even faster and easier.”

The Credit Union migrated its data center a month before the release of Veeam Availability Orchestrator, which complements any Veeam solution by automatically creating, documenting and testing DR plans so enterprises can avoid downtime and data loss, and comply with industry regulations. The Credit Union did its own DR testing.

“I can’t tell you how good it feels knowing I can tell senior management that our DR plan absolutely works,” Gossett said. “For most organizations, DR testing is theoretical. For us, it’s real because we lived it.”

The Credit Union is considering Veeam Availability Orchestrator for the future. In the meantime, the IT team is making good use of functionality in Veeam that wasn’t available in the legacy solution. SureBackup and SureReplica verify the recoverability of backups and replicas, which strengthens the DR strategy.

“Knowing your backups and replicas have completed successfully is a good thing but knowing you can recover from them quickly is a great thing,” said Adam Cass, systems engineer at the Credit Union.

Mike Gorham, a fellow systems engineer, said something else sets Veeam apart: technical support.

“Other companies put product first and support second, but not Veeam,” Gorham explained. “Veeam provides an excellent product and excellent support to go with it.”

The Results

• Data center migration is flawless, on time and on budget
  “Why would you migrate a data center if you weren’t certain you could restore it?” Gossett said. “Anyone considering a data center migration should seriously consider Veeam.”
• Zero downtime and data loss means zero impact on credit union services
  “Not one member was impacted during our data center migration,’ Gossett said. “That’s saying something when you have tens of thousands of members.”
• Verified recoverability strengthens the Credit Union’s DR strategy
  Verifying the recoverability of data reduces the risk of disrupting services to members, who trust the Credit Union with their financial futures.