Payroll companies process millions in wages with help from Veeam and Global Data Vault

The Business Challenge

Global Data Vault (GDV) provides cloud backup, data vaulting services, and disaster recovery (DR) solutions to hundreds of clients spanning many industries. When the company began in 2004, the founders focused on providing file-level recovery, but GDV always had a vision to provide a more complete solution, and that drove the decision to provide DR.

“We choose Veeam,” said Tom May, CIO at GDV. “because Veeam is the leader in backup and DR and because Veeam brings the most helpful and capable team of any provider in the space.”

Veeam Availability Suite provides a single platform for cloud, virtual and physical backup, enabling full ecosystem compatibility and availability for GDV’s clients. Many of them have migrated to Software as a Service (SaaS) infrastructures, including several payroll processing providers that generate paychecks, payroll reports, and tax filings on behalf of their customers.

“Payroll providers take on a huge responsibility for their customers,” May said. “Customers depend on them to process payroll on time and accurately, and that’s where we come in. We use Veeam to back up their infrastructures— including web applications that run payroll processing, so if they experience any kind of failure, we can restore everything, enabling them to resume business as usual. We’re here to prevent any glitch from impacting thousands of people’s paychecks—and lives.”

May said glitches come in all shapes and sizes, so GDV’s clients are familiar with disaster preparedness, especially those located in tornado-prone parts of the country.

“Tornados are no match for GDV and Veeam,” he said. “We provide business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) services no matter where companies are located and what obstacles they face.”

One obstacle was the COVID-19 pandemic. May said most clients’ employees worked remotely and generated an unprecedented amount of data in Microsoft Teams that must be protected and accessible.

“Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 provides total protection, access, and control of their data so they can rest easy,” May said. “We use every Veeam solution to keep our clients’ businesses running and our own business running.”

The Veeam solution

Veeam and GDV simplify cloud backup and data protection. They help ensure thousands of employees are paid millions of dollars on time, and they provide peace of mind through BCDR services for companies in tornado-prone areas. Veeam and GDV also protect fast-growing Microsoft Teams data generated during the pandemic.

“Veeam is the reason we can provide comprehensive data protection and availability to every client,” May said. “Veeam is the engine that powers Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). We spin up a Veeam backup or replica in our secure, private cloud, and our clients are back to business in no time. We use Veeam to protect our clients’ data because it’s the only thing we trust to protect our own data.”

When one of GDV’s payroll processing clients suffered a storage failure late in the day and couldn’t process payroll, May said Veeam came to the rescue.

“Payroll had to be processed that night for several of their customers; otherwise thousands of employees would not be paid. We made sure the client’s failover network was up and running quickly so payroll could be processed. Everyone was paid on time.”

After the Rug Doctor, a global market leader in professional-grade, do-it-yourself carpet cleaning systems, suffered the wrath of a tornado at a facility in Missouri, GDV and Veeam were there to pick up the pieces. The tornado’s vortex created a vacuum of air that collapsed the manufacturing plant’s walls, causing considerable damage. The data center, which processes millions of transactions per year, was completely destroyed. Veeam restored the Rug Doctor’s IT infrastructure in GDV’s cloud so the company could get back to business quickly.

Veeam protects multiple petabytes of client data for GDV. Veeam also protects client data in Office 365, safeguarding it from accidental deletion, security threats, and retention policy gaps.

“It used to be that the number one restore request from clients was Exchange Online emails,” May said. “Now the number one request is Teams’ data because of the massive quantities accrued during the pandemic. Our engineers can recover anything to meet clients’ service level agreements (SLAs) because we use home-grown artificial intelligence (AI) to proactively ensure every SLA is met. If you’re wondering what we use to back up our AI, it’s Veeam—of course. You can’t sell a product you don’t believe in. We use Veeam to protect our business, but Veeam also perpetuates our business.”

The Results

• Helps ensure thousands of employees are paid millions of dollars on time
  “We use Veeam to make sure payroll systems are protected and available because one tiny glitch can impact thousands of people’s paychecks and lives,” May said.
• Provides BCDR services and peace of mind for clients in tornado-prone areas
  “We protect clients’ data no matter what obstacles they face,” May said. “Our job is to get them up and running quickly so they can carry on with business. We only offer services related to Veeam, so that’s how we excel at what we do.”
• Protects rapidly growing Microsoft Teams data generated during the pandemic
  “Veeam gives our clients the power to securely back up Office 365 so their data is always protected and accessible,” May said.