Ice Hockey Pro Team Vancouver Canucks Turns to Veeam Cloud Data Management for Azure

Veeam Software, Inc. announced that the Vancouver Canucks, the professional ice hockey team based in Vancouver, BC, Canada and member of the National Hockey League, has chosen its Availability Suite to replace its legacy data management solution.

Aquilini Investment Group, owners of the Canucks and Rogers Arena, turned to Veeam to provide a greater hospitality and fan experience by ensuring that its ticket scanners, gates, Wi-Fi and point-of-sale systems operate without any downtime.

As the site of approximately 100 games and concerts per year, the Rogers Arena hosts more than a million fans expecting to have an incredible time.

“We pride ourselves on the experience we offer our fans, and optimizing their time at the arena means making sure the IT systems that support our hospitality services are running efficiently at all times,” said Bryce Hollweg, director of IT, Aquilini Investment Group. “If the point-of-sale system fails for one hour during each event, we’d risk losing over $100K in sales. Veeam keeps our services fully operational so we can maximize the fan experience. From scanning tickets to offering Wi-Fi and a smooth interaction at the point-of sale, Veeam keeps us running on game day.“

The Aquilini Investment Group sought faster backup and recovery systems to best support the hospitality services its IT department manages at Rogers Arena as well as its entire portfolio of companies including hotels, restaurants and other businesses across Canada. In replacing the legacy systems with Availability Suite and Direct Restore to Azure, the Aquilini Investment Group has the peace of mind that if a failure were to occur, the system remains functional with a direct restore to Azure.

“As the 2019 Veeam Cloud Data Management Report found, data availability and recovery are critical to business success. When the average length of time for an unplanned outage lasts 65 minutes, companies can lose revenue and customer satisfaction – as is the case with the Aquilini Investment Group,” said Paul Strelzick, SVP of Americas, Veeam. “With proper cloud data management, enterprises can have the confidence that their data is available at all times, eliminating costly downtime and improving overall customer – and fan – experience.“

Veeam backups and replicates 60 vSphere VMs (180TB) between two data centers and also backs them up to Azure, providing the Aquilini Investment Group with best practices for intelligent data management. Veeam Direct Restore to Azure helps companies maintain BC by protecting all workloads, both on-premises and in Azure. It provides an easy way to move, test and restore Veeam backups and eliminates the complexity of setting up an on-demand recovery site in Azure.

“Veeam delivers the scalability, reliability and cloud data management we didn’t have in the past,” Hollweg said. “It dramatically reduces our administrative overhead, saving 10 to 12 hours each week. That’s a significant savings for a small IT department like ours. We now can allocate resources to find new ways to meet the IT needs of all of our business units.“