Rawlplug keeps manufacturing lines running by slashing backup times by 99% with Veeam

Business challenge

Ever since John Joseph Rawlings invented the very first wall plug over 100 years ago, Rawlplug has been providing the construction industry with high-quality and innovative fixings, fasteners, tools, and specialized training. Today, Rawlplug products are trusted by millions of engineers, architects, and contractors around the world.

Rawlplug has recently experienced tremendous growth, driven by demand both for its products as well as for the expertise-based training they provide to employees and customers via the Rawlplug Academy programme. To sustain success and ensure excellent customer service, Rawlplug must make sure that its mission-critical applications — including everything from its sales and finance system to its e-learning platform — run smoothly 24/7/365. “Almost everything we do is supported by a digital process,” said Sebastian Węgrzynkiewicz, Head of the IT Infrastructure and Support at Rawlplug.

“So, any loss of or inability to find data could disrupt our manufacturing lines or the access to the training materials for those who use the Rawlplug Academy e-learning platform, and ultimately affect our revenue streams and damage the trust our customers place in us. Consequently, ensuring that our data are protected is a top priority, which is why we back up our most vital datasets every few minutes.”

For many years, Rawlplug relied on multiple solutions to back up its IT environment. This approach was expensive, complex, and timeconsuming, with some backup processes taking up to a week. As a result, the company was at risk of being unable to recover up-to-date versions of its business-critical data in the event of unplanned downtime, which added to the risk of lost sales and reputational damage.

“We found it increasingly hard to find new IT staff with enough competence to monitor and manage our systems,” said Węgrzynkiewicz. “If an office employee accidentally deleted a file or folder, recovering it proved difficult and time-consuming. When making inventory and production decisions on the fly, the ability to find information quickly is key to our competitive advantage.”

With plans to launch a new manufacturing plant to meet the growing demand for its products and services, Rawlplug decided it was time to evolve and enhance its backup environment, and targeted a single, scalable, and cost-effective solution to close the gap.

The Veeam solution

To defend itself against unplanned downtime — whether from a cyberattack or hardware failure — and to simplify backup management, Rawlplug replaced multiple backup solutions with Veeam Backup & Replication.

“We wanted to find a backup solution that was scalable, easy to manage, secure and, most importantly, that could work well with our diverse IT environment,” said Węgrzynkiewicz. “Veeam Backup & Replication meets all of these requirements, and does so at a very attractive price point. This is key, since the amount of data in our IT infrastructure has doubled in just the past two years — a trend that we expect will continue in the years ahead.”

Today, Veeam protects all of Rawlplug’s essential systems from disruption, including its SAP HANA database, mail servers and Microsoft 365 accounts. The intuitive user interface simplifies and accelerates backup management for the company’s IT team. Rawlplug now backs up its entire environment daily using the Veeam technology.

“We’re really impressed with just how easy it is to configure backups of our SAP HANA environment, which is a crucial system since it logs all of our sales and transaction data,” said Węgrzynkiewicz. “Veeam provides us with a clear view of all the data across our IT infrastructure so we can make sure that no system is left unprotected.”

“With Veeam, we can now recover data from anywhere in our IT infrastructure, and restore accidentally deleted files in minutes rather than hours,” added Węgrzynkiewicz. “Ultimately, this helps our employees to be more efficient at work, since they no longer face delays which used to take hours. In the 24/7/365 world of manufacturing, this is a real advantage.

”The Veeam technology has paved the way for Rawlplug to harness the power of virtualization technologies, making IT system management simpler and more streamlined.

“Our previous backup solutions didn’t support virtual machines [VMs] on a global scale without complex integration,” said Węgrzynkiewicz. “With Veeam, we can run multiple, isolated virtual environments without much trouble. Veeam is also capable of verifying VMs, which helps us to ensure and validate the integrity of our virtual environments before we restore them. Overall, Veeam gives our IT team peace of mind that core applications and data are protected, and can be recovered quickly and easily if we encounter any issues.”

Fast restore capabilities also strengthen the company’s disaster recovery (DR) posture, reducing its business risk.

“We feel confident that with Veeam, we could quickly recover all of our data even in the event of a cyberattack,” said Węgrzynkiewicz. “By minimizing the possibility of interruptions to our manufacturing processes, we protect our profitability and make sure that we deliver reliably to the customers that depend on us.”

Lessons learned

• Offers a total cost of ownership estimated to be three times lower than those of an equivalent solution applied on the same scale: “Veeam Backup & Replication is incredibly powerful, simple to use and above all, very affordable,” said Węgrzynkiewicz. “It has enabled us to reduce the costs associated with our hardware as well as cloud services, and it helps us to ensure that we continue to deliver world-class products to our global customer base.”
• Cuts backup times by up to 99% and boosts backup success rate to 100%, minimizing the risk of business disruption from unplanned downtime: “It used to take us a week to back up the critical elements of our IT infrastructure,” said Węgrzynkiewicz. “Using Veeam, we can back up our environment in just 1.5 hours, and perform a full system restore in the same amount of time, if necessary, which helps us to strengthen business continuity.”
• Helps Rawlplug to reduce the hiring cycle for new IT talent, boosting agility: Rawlplug no longer needs specialized skillsets to manage its backup environment. Consequently, the company can source new hires faster and accelerate training, helping the business to stay agile.