German Tax Consultancy Kieffer Stübben & Partner Selecting Nakivo

Kieffer Stübben & Partner (KSP), a German tax consultancy firm, achieves a better benefit-to-cost ratio and gains an enhanced technical support with Nakivo Backup & Replication.

KSP is providing business, tax and entrepreneurial consulting services to companies, freelance entrepreneurs and individuals. In a globalized business landscape, business and tax consulting services for clients from Latin America and China have become an essential part of the firm’s portfolio. In addition, KSP supports numerous NGOs in navigating the laws of donations and sponsorships.

Located in Düsseldorf, Germany, the firm’s main data center holds a total of 5 physical servers and 23 VMs. These machines are also accessed remotely by the firm’s Munich site. KSP stores Microsoft Active Directory, SQL Server, simple files, email servers, Exchange and DATEV – the main tax consulting software used for accounting, overseeing, and administrative purposes.

Considering the number of KSP employees and their line of work, losing access to files for more than a few hours is disastrous for the firm’s workflow. That is why efficient and reliable backup, recovery and replication procedures are vital to the firm’s day-to-day work. In addition to possible natural disasters and technical failures, unintentional errors by employees should always be covered. A file can be deleted by an employee by accident, so the ability to recover that file in a matter of minutes is crucial.

Before implementing Backup & Replication, KSP protected its virtual environment using another VM backup solution. Although the company was satisfied with the reliability of the previous solution, the benefit-to-cost ratio was unsatisfactory. The vendor’s technical support options and performance were not up to par either. In case of an emergency, it was not able to reach the vendor’s technical support team as swiftly as needed in order to avoid disruption to its operations. That was why it had to find a vendor with a technical support service as reliable as its data protection solution.

Nakivo was recommended to KSP by their contracted solution partner. Due to the partner’s experience with Backup & Replication, as well as feedback from similar companies, KSP decided to switch. Backup & Replication provides reliable data protection at a greater value and offers technical support. Nakivo offers support by phone, chat and email, with an average support satisfaction rate of 98% from customers. As a result, the firm improved its benefit-to-cost ratio and gained a reliable technical support service.

Nakivo offers a way to build your own backup appliance by installing the software on a Qnap NAS server in order to achieve better performance, increase reliability and save time.

“We decided to install Backup & Replication on a Qnap NAS for storage purposes. Running the software on a NAS itself has the benefit of reducing the IT team’s stress and the load on our servers. Installation is equally easy on a VM and it is also a plus. However, by combining software and hardware together, we not only take the load off our servers, but also achieve better recovery times,” says Phillip Stübben, a KSP partner.

The company performs backup and replication jobs with Nakivo on a daily and a monthly basis.

“Backup & Replication provides an easy way of adding disks without too much hassle, as it helps avoiding a forgotten disk at the end of the day. With a friendly web interface, the whole process of running backup and replication jobs is simple and has the potential to save time and money in the long run. Moreover, global data de-dupe helps save storage space on our disks, so in the end, saving more money on top of that,” says Stübben.

Nakivo provides instant VM recovery and instant granular recovery for KSP. With instant VM recovery, an entire VM can be recovered in minutes, while instant granular recovery provides near instant recovery of individual files, folders and emails.

“The ability to recover data without having to wait for hours or even days is great. Leaving our employees without the ability to work for a few minutes or for a whole day is a big difference. We’re all humans, and humans make errors. It can happen that employees delete files by accident. With instant file recovery, we can recover files within minutes, and as a result, avoid disruptions to the workflow and recreation of files from scratch,” says Stübben.

With Nakivo, KSP has achieved a better benefit-to-cost ratio and gained an efficient support service from Nakivo’s technical engineers. With Qnap NAS installation, the firm also consolidated software and hardware and reduced the load on its servers. With instant VM recovery and instant file recovery, KSP can recover entire VMs and individual file within minutes.

“The strongest selling point for us was the enhanced support service that Backup & Replication offers. We do not feel alone in case of an emergency. The improved benefit-to-cost ratio is nice, but this is not the main factor. Several functionalities already contribute towards saving time, but we feel that the most important thing for us is avoiding the stress and uncertainty when things do not work out as planned. Thus, the support service is the most vital benefit we gained by switching to Backup & Replication,” concluded Stübben.