“Since moving our infrastructure from onsite to Stage2Data’s Cloud hosting and backup services we would never look back. Their service and support over the years has been phenomenal.”
Summary
Avanta Insurance Inc. is an independent insurance broker, with a history going back to 1968. With their head offices located in Toronto, Canada, and having been in operation for over 50 years, client data and business continuity are vital components of their business. Since moving to the cloud in July 2015, Stage2Data was chosen as Avanta’s preferred cloud hosting and backup and recovery managed service provider. They have continued to deliver excellent service. Stage2Data recently became a certified Internet Service Provider (ISP) and upgraded their backend infrastructure, which arguably makes them one of the fastest Managed Service Providers (MSP) in North America, offering cloud hosting, backups and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). Recent backup performance speeds at Avanta Insurance improved more than 4 times.
Background
Before moving to the cloud, Avanta used to run 5 backups per day using a third-party tool provided by Dell. In terms of this process, cartridges had to be removed manually which, needless to say, was a tedious task which presented numerous issues. Backups failing was one of these issues at which point IT had to be called out which was a costly exercise.
Moving to the cloud
Having two offices at the beginning of 2015, Avanta investigated the possibility of moving their hosting to the cloud instead of upgrading to a large local server which would have been a much costlier exercise. The Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario (IBAO) recommended Stage2Data as their preferred Managed Cloud Service Provider. Bonnie Grys, Avanta Insurance’s CEO, reached out to the team at Stage2Data who onboarded Avanta onto their secure cloud Data Center and assisted with moving all their local data and applications. This exercise was, however, not without its obstacles since it required some software updates. Nevertheless, the team at Stage2Data delivered excellent service ensuring that support, both telephonically and onsite, was available around the clock.
Backup speed improvements over 400%
Avanta recently brought in 3 offices located in Barrie, Ontario, who are all using the same Stage2data Cloud Hosted service. Collectively, the brokerage is currently hosting and backing up approximately 1 TB of data from 25 terminals located at the four offices and a sales team of 10 at various remote locations. Avanta also make use of Stage2Data’s replication backup and failover service in the event of disaster.
Daily incremental backups run at 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 10pm. In the past backups would take anything from 1 to 5 hours depending on the connectivity and the size of the data. Stage2Data’s recently upgraded infrastructure and their certified ISP status, resulted in backups now taking on average 15 – 20 minutes to complete. This is at least 4 times faster than what it used to be.
Conclusion
“Since moving our infrastructure from onsite to Stage2Data’s Cloud hosting and backup services we would never look back. Their service and support over the years has been phenomenal. Even though there have been some blips from time to time, the team are always quick to respond and resolve any issues. Now with the much faster backup times of only 15 minutes I would happily recommend their services to anyone looking to move to the cloud. We are very satisfied with Stage2Data and are looking forward to continued business,” says Bonnie Grys, CEO and owner, Avanta Insurance Inc.
