BZ: We were a hard-core Veeam shop. A lot of our customers’ environments are ESX-based, and we’ve always combined it with a local option to take backups off-site. We deployed, sold, and supported Veeam for years. But we decided to use the SolarWinds N-central® platform for remote monitoring and management and when I looked at the integrated SolarWinds Backup, I found it had basically the same feature set as Veeam, but with the advantage of a single, integrated management console. Sure, there are some extra bells and whistles with Veeam, but I can count on one hand how many times we used those features over the past 10 years.
We started with 30 server instances of SolarWinds because we have one of the largest environmental service companies among our customers, and getting their data off-site was a requirement. With SolarWinds’ private cloud, that was included in the cost of the backup product and supported by the same support organization. That alone made things much simpler and cleaner for us.
SWMSP: How did your philosophy about taking care of your team factor into this decision?
BZ: Our team is close-knit, and we take care of each other. I think it’s important to let people have some time to breathe, grab a cup of tea, or whatever. I never want them to hate their job. The convenience factor of working with SolarWinds—having one simple interface to control everything, both local and off-site—saves them time every week.
Before switching to SolarWinds, we had to manage the Veeam component separately for each customer. We also had to deal with the various local data center providers for off-site storage. It all took time and resources. Now the whole thing is streamlined, which makes life better for my team.
To read more about why Digimite chose SolarWinds Backup, download the full Q&A here. Or listen to the on-demand webinar with Bart below…
