Iceland’s DK Software switch to Cohesity increases reliability, ease of use, and capacity efficiency

The Challenge

The frontline businesses that rely on DK Software are themselves in large part providers of services. Their reputations and livelihoods depend on their digitised systems being available whenever they are needed, with real-time updating and constant data availability. A computer outage and any data loss could cause a DK Software client to miss a sales opportunity and incur reputational damage. If problems occur, clients expect DK Software’s services to be faultless, seamless, and fast.

DK Software previously had an outsourced, hosted backup/restore solution. It was in discussions with its existing vendor to upgrade, but while the vendor was keen to continue with a hosted solution, DK Software wanted to take more ownership of its data, and have a greater degree of control. What the team at DK Software was looking for in terms of operational gains can be summed up in one word: simplification.

The organisation needed to perform necessary tasks without calling on the company’s most technically skilled people all the time, broadening the range of staff that could help clients with urgent restores. The organisation also had a strong desire for a self-service system, so that client servicing could be completed in house.

In addition, DK Software had budgetary considerations, yet acknowledged a backup and restore solution was a necessary expense. The question leadership asked was whether the expenditure was providing the best value for the money. Brynjar Hermannsson, head of the technical support department at DK Software, said of its existing system, “It was OK but not the latest tech and getting increasingly costly for us.”

The Solution

Having recently invested in a new solution, DK Software re-visited its choice after a short time and subsequently switched to Cohesity, walking away from the initial solution. The DK Software team think this was a great decision.

Cohesity brought together three vitally important considerations for DK Software. As Hafdal put it, “The user interface was easy to understand and use, the support was very good, and the sales team were excellent. I could contact them directly; they gave really good feedback when we got stuck and they were always trying to determine our needs. At times, I felt like I was Cohesity’s only customer.”

DK Software deployed Cohesity, spread across two sites in an active-passive setup. Cohesity replication ensures fast disaster recovery, as well as provides an air-gap between the sites so that there is no possibility of cross-contamination of malware. Four nodes contain 96 TB of capacity.

The Results

With its previous vendor, DK Software had backed up once every 24 hours, so that if a client requested a restore, there was a possibility the client could lose more than the last 23 hours of data. With the relative speed and efficiency delivered by Cohesity, backups now can be started at four-hour intervals—a 6x increase in frequency. And a move to backing up every two hours is planned imminently—which will result in a 12x increase in client recovery points. Even this is not the end of possibilities.

Hermannsson notes that “14 percent of our storage capacity previously was consumed on a 24-hour backup cycle. Moving to a four-hour cycle uses just 20 percent, and so moving to a two-hour cycle is going to be well within our capacity, available at no extra cost, and will not affect our 1.5 to 2 years ROI.” This is due to Cohesity’s variable-block data duplication and class-leading capacity efficiency.