In celebration of World Backup Day, we’re highlighting the best of backup with our partners who’ve done an outstanding job for their clients. These MSPs are a model for how to prepare your clients with the best backup and recovery strategies before an incident occurs.

These partners really stand out for their work in protecting their clients from downtime and data loss.

Most forward-thinking MSP: Ceeva

As SMBs transition to the cloud, they’re relying on the MSPs to ensure that their business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) coverage remains firmly in place. “Our customers tell us that minimizing downtime is the most important thing,” says Rick Topping, Vice President of Operations and Technology for Ceeva. “However, there are challenges for MSPs with the native Azure Backup system that Microsoft provides. The costs are not predictable and it doesn’t integrate with our existing systems, which makes it hard to know if you have a functioning backup.”

“Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure is an ideal solution for Ceeva and our end customers,” says Topping. “We rely on Datto SIRIS for on-premises BCDR. When Datto launched DCMA we knew we’d be able to provide the same high performance that our customers expect.”

As SMBs continue gravitating toward the public cloud, Ceeva has the confidence that comes with a Datto solution made for the needs of MSPs. “Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure gives us the reliability and trust we require for BCDR,” Topping concludes.

Best performance in a high-stakes situation: CMIT

“We got a call from the client at 9 am on a Saturday, letting us know they had been affected by ransomware,” said Linda Kuppersmith, the owner of CMIT Solutions Stamford & Hartford, “we were only responsible for backup and disaster for this particular client, so we did not get any ransomware alert.”

“We shortly discovered the backup was infected, that a backup failed at 4:20 am that Saturday.” Linda explained, “we further discovered 9/10 servers and 30/100 workstations were hit with ransomware.” The whole incident was catastrophic for the client freezing every transaction across the property, from restaurant services to checkout. Worse, it happened at one of the busiest times of the year.

The client “Was skeptical that recovery could be achieved without paying the considerable ransom since anything more than 2 days would be catastrophic for the business. We stated we were confident it would take nowhere near that time to virtualize good snapshots of the affected servers”, said Linda. The main database virtualized at 12:10 pm and finished virtualizing at 11:00 pm for a 1 TB oracle database service.”

We were able to get them virtualized and have the VPN connection from the cloud to the local LAN,” Linda continued, “Their systems were up and mostly operational just 10 hours later, with the resort being fully operational 13 hours after the backup failed.”

Achievement for going above and beyond: Total Communications

“When you start talking about backups, and then expand that into business continuity, they often say, ‘Wow! We haven’t really thought about this – how will we outfit our people when disaster strikes?’” says Scott Lennon, CEO of Total Communications. “Helping customers prepare is a major part of our offering.”

“Our goal is to be the right-fit technology partner by working with each client’s needs,” says Shawn Silver, COO of Total Communications. “We work to understand what they currently have for infrastructure and business continuity, then develop a plan that works within their budget. The goal is to be a whole-service client consultant.”

“We have a big footprint with Datto appliances – we’re currently overseeing more than 100 devices,” says Andrew Shmer, Computer Services Engineer for Total Communications. “SIRIS provides multiple recovery options in physical and virtual environments, for small and medium-sized businesses. Using SIRIS we can bring an organization back up and running within minutes when there’s an outage. Our customers are truly amazed by what SIRIS can do in those situations.

Source: Datto