Gammon Construction in Hong Kong Opts for Veeam Availability Suite and Backup for Microsoft Office 36

Veeam Software, Inc. announced that Gammon Construction Limited, one of Asia’s premier construction groups based in Hong Kong, has selected its Availability Suite and Backup for Microsoft Office 365 to safeguard critical data as the business accelerates digital transformation with rapid adoption of cloud computing via Office 365 and digital platforms such as building information management (BIM) systems.

As an industry trailblazer, Gammon is pioneering new ways of operating in its drive to be digital. Speed and collaboration are critical enablers of this with more than 4,000 Gammon employees across the region actively collaborating in the cloud, further spurred by increased remote working from Covid-19. Critical data and BC were at risk as the native backup of Office 365 could not guarantee 100% data restore during DR with data growth surging. In addition, the previous backup tools meant days or weeks for a full backup and restore, while retrieval of archived data often needed 5 days to process.

The customer adopted Backup for Microsoft Office 365 to optimise backup and recovery speeds while enabling a 100% data restore guarantee. With the ability to do daily backups of over 500TB of Office 365 data with data restore and retrieval within hours, it is pushing ahead on its digital transformation with confidence and enabling an always-on 24/7 operating model.

“Our adoption of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 was very timely as the Covid-19 situation accelerated the need for remote working and real-time data availability. We are glad that Veeam takes care of our data in the cloud so we have the resources and confidence to focus on building more innovative solutions that will revolutionise our construction business,” said Joseph Chan, senior manager, information security and operations, Gammon Construction.

The addition of Backup for Microsoft Office 365 complements Gammon’s existing use of the Availability Suite for backup and recovery, which has raised IT efficiency levels and improved its productivity by helping engineering teams retrieve historical data. In the past, the IT team needed at least 5 days to restore an entire data set from tape archives. Veeam’s file-level restores has made it easy to search for and restore a single file in the database, shortening each restore process to a few hours.

Gammon is an early adopter of BIM technology, which supports its ambition to digitally integrate the full construction value chain from planning and design to construction, maintenance and more. Huge data volumes are generated from each construction project with a single BIM model going over 100MB, with some reaching 1GB. Managing data growth at this scale requires a more structured approach to protect critical information assets.

“By adopting Veeam’s data protection tools, Gammon has freed up resource for its IT teams to innovate, raise levels of reliance, BC and improved protection of critical data vs. cybersecurity threats. The specific use of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 helps Gammon eliminate the risk of losing access and control over Office 365 data so that it is always protected and accessible,” said Joseph Chan, senior regional director, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, Veeam.