Workforce Software employs Office 365 data protection with Druva

Michigan-based WorkForce Software is a world leader in cloud-based personnel management, providing Software-as-a- Service (SaaS) solutions to organizations. As a business based in Detroit, with offices across the globe, WorkForce Software needed to implement a centralized backup and archival plan that protected the company’s critical Office 365 end-user data and allowed for easy recovery from time-indexed snapshots.

Peter Webber, Director of IT Operations at WorkForce Software, and his team are responsible for overseeing the backup and archival of Office 365 data as well as all company endpoints, such as employee laptops, desktops, and mobile devices. Webber was acutely aware of the inherent risks of utilizing Office 365 as a business tool—one risk being that storing data “in the cloud” does not automatically guarantee its safety. He also emphasized that having “the ability to actually own and control your data is very important.”

Prior to Webber’s arrival at WorkForce Software, the company had been utilizing a legacy onsite product to handle backup and archival needs. “The legacy solution was difficult to implement, and often users wouldn’t get backed up”—a fatal flaw for any product, as Webber recognized. Another headache was the time it took to administer the legacy product. It required a lot of manual intervention. WorkForce Software had also recently acquired a company with a large percentage of users residing outside of the United States, a marked shift from the existing structure. This new acquisition required the backup and recovery services to adhere to specific data residency regulations.

Initially, the company had implemented Druva inSync
as a solution to backup the company endpoints and was extremely satisfied with its performance and ease of use. Webber quickly realized that the product could provide the same advantages when protecting their cloud application data as well. “We were looking to unify some of the ways we backed stuff up, so the ability to…better serve our Office 365 environment was a key driver.” As time went on, it became clear that inSync might prove to be the ‘magic bullet’ the company was looking for.

A key consideration for WorkForce Software was the ability of inSync to scale along with the organization— incorporating global offices and new cloud business tools— and ensure that data residency requirements were being met. Webber described how Druva was able to meet these needs: “[Druva’s] ability to work with various cloud services and the expected growth of those additional services was pretty enticing… and we were able to add backups for our Google accounts that we were never backing up…because we didn’t really have a way to do that.”

One of Webber’s favorite aspects of the solution is its ease of use. “It’s almost just a ‘set it and forget it’ infomercial thing,” he says. “You install it, you let it run, and then it does its thing and you don’t have to deal with it. And there is no managing of data, there is no managing anything—it’s just going to be covered, because Druva handles the hard kind of stuff…all you have to do is get it installed, and you are done.” Key management functions can be performed with just a few clicks, saving time and making compliance considerably easier. Webber says that when a request for data comes to him, “I need something quickly, [and] I get it back. That’s saved us some tickets for sure.”