Cerium Names Druva a Strategic Partner to Strengthen Security Posture and Simplify Environments

Cerium is a systems integrator and a strategic partner to Druva. A privately held Washington corporation, Cerium provides data center services such as planning, assessments, integration, design, implementation, management, and support for customer infrastructure solutions. In addition, Cerium delivers enterprise network, security & communication solutions to over 500 clients in the western US that support over 400,000 end users.

Cerium was using a complicated and disaggregated backup platform to protect its VMware and Microsoft 365 environments. Alex Lakey, Senior Systems Administrator at Cerium Networks, described the solution as “clunky," explaining: “It had Azure VMs to run all backups and Amazon S3 buckets to store backups in. It wasn't the most glamorous solution and it cost much more than our team was comfortable paying." The team needed to log into a virtual machine just to access its backup software.

As IT started adding up costs for backup software licensing, storage, renewals, and Azure services and storage, Zach Feingold, Cerium’s lead data center engineer, said, “We had five different bills and budget line items across four vendors." When the Cerium team took a closer look and noticed a 40% increase plus additional licenses for increased workloads, they knew they needed to reevaluate their options. Adopting a scalable, secure, and cost-effective solution became top-of-mind.

Additionally, Cerium is a significant Microsoft partner, and the team started to think about how it could better serve its clients in the SaaS space. Its clients were looking for a simple, easy to manage solution, and Cerium’s previous backup options were complex and “piecemealed” together. Clients sought SaaS-based data protection as they began to rely more on SaaS applications. One of Cerium’s services helps clients looking to migrate Microsoft applications from on-premises to Microsoft 365. Feingold and team needed a good solution to protect that data following the migration process.

“Our clients are looking for guidance on what makes the most sense from a security and efficiency standpoint — without spending more than they need," Feingold said. “And being a vendor for a lot of different clients, you see just how frequently they're getting hit with ransomware."

After reviewing options, Cerium ultimately chose the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud to simplify data protection for its multi-cloud environments and various workloads. Druva’s multi-cloud support protects its VMware environments and Microsoft 365 data under one simple, easy-to-use platform. Druva is a much more elegant solution than Cerium’s previous software. As a result, it has enabled the team to cut down on its time spent managing backups. “There's no infrastructure left to update anymore. It's all in the cloud. The backup components don't need any manual touching, which is great,” Lakey said. He also reported that he no longer has to log in to multiple systems before accessing a program and then the backups. “I just go to our Druva console now — it’s all there, easy to manage and make adjustments.”

Additionally, once Druva released advanced ransomware recovery and security features, Cerium was an early adopter. These features enable Cerium to continuously monitor their security posture, detect anomalies within backup data sets, expedite incident response, and accelerate data recovery should Cerium need to respond to an attack.

To illustrate how easy it is to use the Druva solution, Lakey told the story of an employee who accidentally deleted ten years’ worth of emails. Using Druva, all Lakey needed to do to remedy the situation was log in to the Druva console. “I clicked restore on the folder he deleted and not five minutes later everything was back up and running.”

After Cerium moved many of their own clients over to Druva, solution satisfaction complaints have decreased dramatically. Feingold says, “Since moving clients to Druva, a lot of complaints about challenges with a backup solution have definitely gone away, and clients are just really happy with the solution we're providing.”

Druva also helps Cerium better manage its IT budget. With one bill instead of five fluctuating bills with all separate payment/renewal dates, it’s easier to predict what its costs will be and budget because there are fewer fees to make costs fluctuate month-to-month. According to Feingold, “We're no longer nickel and dimed on fees as we test restores or put more data in the cloud. We've already sized the solution for what we need and it’s all inclusive with that. With the almost 25% we saved on costs by switching to Druva, we had more funds to invest in the security components that we deemed critical.”

Enhancing the team’s security posture was another big reason Cerium moved to Druva from its previous platform. Druva’s immutable backups and ransomware recovery were big selling points. Lakey says, “Druva’s ransomware detection features have made our cyber insurance auditor less cranky, which has been a huge benefit in moving over to Druva." Since the team uses the security features internally, it’s much easier to advise clients to use them as well. As Lakey put it, “It would look foolish if we didn’t run it ourselves.”