When problems arose with the city’s previous backup solution, it turned to iland Secure Cloud Backup for Veeam Cloud Connect and iland Insider Protection to save money and ensure peace of mind.
iland, a leading VMware-based provider for application hosting, data protection and disaster recovery services delivered on the iland Secure Cloud Platform, announced that the City of Bend, Oregon, has chosen iland Secure Cloud Backup for Veeam Cloud Connect with iland Insider Protection to secure a majority of the city’s critical applications.
Located on the Deschutes River in central Oregon, the City of Bend is home to an estimated population of 90,000. Known for its breathtaking scenery and year-round access to outdoor activities, it has become a getaway destination for tourists interested in nature sports like mountain biking, fishing, white-water rafting, and skiing. The city’s local government serves the community by focusing on core services such as public safety, utilities, economic, and community development.
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When Matt Smith arrived as the city’s new IT Network Administrator in 2020, he was tasked with upgrading its offsite backup strategy. The solution they were using — offered by one of the large hyperscaler cloud providers — had consistently failed to meet the city’s needs. At times, it struggled to provide successful backups and cost the city increasingly unmanageable ingress and egress fees.
“We wanted to get away from our previous solution, so it was my job to implement that path forward,” said Smith. “We had a lot of technical issues, backups that were unsuccessful, and it was pretty costly as well. It was definitely problematic. Those were two pretty significant motivating factors.”
After seeking a partner recommendation, Smith and his team selected iland Secure Cloud Backup for Veeam Cloud Connect to handle the offsite backup and archive for a majority of the city’s applications and data. Integrated with Veeam®, the leader in backup, recovery and data management solutions that deliver Modern Data Protection, iland Secure Cloud Backup provided a reliable safety net for a range of data loss events including malicious or accidental deletions, hardware failures and cybercrime.
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“The three main factors we considered when evaluating new cloud backup solutions were integration with Veeam, which was particularly important, and then uptime and cost,” said Smith. “It was such a relief once we finally made the transition to iland. Now that the backups are in place, it’s been pretty much hands off. I don’t even think about it, which is kind of the best part of the service.”
Cybercrime, which continues to skyrocket, was also a significant area of concern. State and local governments, in particular, have become an attractive target for hackers. According to recent statistics, nearly 2,400 U.S.-based governments, health-care facilities, and schools fell victim to ransomware in 2020.
“Obviously, we’ve seen a steady barrage of cyberattacks in the news and that has us thinking,” said Smith. “A lot of small cities, and the industrial control systems within those cities, have been targeted. We’re very cognizant of what’s going on and we want to protect ourselves — iland Secure Cloud Backup is just one of many ways we’re trying to do that.”
In addition to backup, the city also utilizes iland Insider Protection, which guards against a variety of internal and external threats, including ransomware and malicious or accidental deletion. An exclusive service for those running Veeam Cloud Connect, Insider Protection automatically moves backup files to an air-gapped location that is not visible or accessible to the customer or available to public routing. These files are retained in this isolated location and can be saved and transferred back once ready to restore data.
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“IT professionals within state and local government agencies have no small task — relied upon to, quite literally, keep the lights on and maintain the critical services that sustain the cities and towns we choose to call home,” said Scott Sparvero. “iland has long-prioritized helping to protect cities like Bend, Oregon, with solutions like Secure Cloud Backup and Insider Protection. As threats increase, so does the need to ensure a robust, secure, and resilient IT infrastructure.”
With iland and Veeam managing the city’s backups, Smith and his team gained the freedom to pursue other IT initiatives, and whenever he did need an update, he could lean on the unparalleled transparency provided by the iland Cloud Console. The console allows Smith, and all iland customers, to closely monitor and manage all the city’s cloud resources effectively in terms of cost, performance, regulatory compliance, and support.
“In my experience, including places I’ve worked in the past, organizations can devote a huge amount of time to managing backups. It’s a day-to-day process. I don’t have any of that,” said Smith. “The combination of iland and Veeam has worked out really great for us. Not having to think about our backups has given me more time and energy to address all the other tasks on our plate.”
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