Follett, Manufacturer of Ice and Refrigeration Solutions, Select Veeam

Veeam Software, Inc. announced that Follett LLC, a designer and manufacturer of ice and refrigeration solutions, has replaced its legacy backup system with Veeam Availability Suite to ensure that its mission-critical ERP systems are always-on and continuously available for its customers.

With Veeam, Follett increased its backup and recovery success rate for tier-1 systems from 63% to 100%, eliminating system downtime for its mission-critical ERP system, and achieving ROI within months.

Based in Easton, PA, with additional manufacturing operations in Bethleham, PA, and Gdansk, Poland, Follett provides solutions for the food service and healthcare industries. The company’s products are in such high demand that its manufacturing facilities and ERP system must operate around the clock.

Prior to deploying the Veeam solution, the company’s plants were operating at peak performance until a problem arose with the ERP system. A critical file was overwritten and couldn’t be restored, taking the system down for five hours. While the IT team ultimately found a way to work around it, the situation startled everyone.

“ERP is mission-critical,” said Michael Labate, system administrator, Follett. “Our ERP system runs everything from order entry to production planning. If our ERP system is not highly available, we stand to lose thousands of dollars per hour. Downtime is unacceptable.” 

“We all agreed we needed to make a change, and fast-unreliable backup and recovery was threatening the business,” he added. “Several people told me Veeam would be the best backup application I would ever use. They were right. Veeam cannot be beat.“

Veeam Availability Suite combines backup, restore, and replication capabilities of Veeam Backup & Replication with the monitoring, reporting and capacity planning functionality of Veeam ONE. It delivers what an organization needs to reliably ensure and manage vSphere and Hyper-V environments, including fast recovery, verified recoverability, visibility, data loss avoidance, and leveraged data for streamlined DR.

“Veeam helps us meet customer demand and stay ahead of the competition by ensuring ERP is highly available,” Labate said. “Our backup and recovery success rate for all tier-1 systems has been 100% since switching to Veeam. I can truly say Veeam is one of the best-if not the best-software suites I’ve ever used.“

Veeam delivers Always-On Availability for Follett’s critical systems, including ERP. It also enables the company to do something it couldn’t before-DR testing. The company can test failovers for ERP and other tier-1 systems to protect its most critical data. In fact, DR testing is mandatory because Follett has become a public company and must comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). Reports from the Veeam solution enable the company to document backup and recoverability testing, with detailed test logs validating SOX compliance.

Veeam also gives the user visibility into the backup and vSphere infrastructures, so the IT team can identify and resolve issues before they develop into problems and impact business.

“With Veeam delivering 24.7.365 Availability of our ERP and other critical systems, we were able to eliminate contracts with third-party providers who were helping us keep hardware and software up-and-running,” Labate added. “Veeam paid for itself within months. I can truly say Veeam is a set-and-forget solution.”

“With the high demand for its top-quality solutions, Follett needs to manufacture non-stop to meet the needs of customers, and, as a public company, SOX compliance is vital,” said Jeff Gianetti, SVP of North America sales, Veeam. “Veeam provides Follett with complete visibility of its backup and virtual infrastructures so its IT team can identify and resolve issues before they develop into problems and impact business. This is a dynamic, fast-moving operation, and it’s gratifying to provide Follett with the Availability they need to continue ‘icing’ the competition and growing their bottom line. 

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