Energy Provider Evergy Opts for Veeam

Veeam Software, Inc. announced that Evergy Inc., a provider of clean, safe and reliable energy to 1.6 million residential, commercial and industrial customers in Kansas and Missouri, has chosen its Backup & Replication to protect the IT systems required for supporting power production and customer service.

It also supports regulatory requirements including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and Part 810, a regulation from the US Department of Energy that controls the transfer of unclassified nuclear technology. Moreover, it streamlines data management and is more affordable than legacy backup, saving at least 20 hours weekly of IT resources.

Customers count on Evergy to power their homes and businesses, a responsibility the company takes seriously. In addition to providing safe, reliable power, the company embraces alternative energy sources-nearly half of the power it provides is emissions-free.

“Evergy is focused on being a forward-thinking, sustainable energy company, and that focus extends to IT,” said Rob Adams, manager of systems engineering, Evergy. “We’re whittling down applications to precisely what the business needs to achieve its goals, and that included consolidating backup software.“

Evergy was using 2 solutions. Adams said backup configuration and management weren’t as simple and automatic as he wanted for his team. Consolidating from 2 solutions to Veeam, which includes image-level backups, streamlined processes and recovery went from hours to minutes.

“There was a lot of unnecessary hands-on work with the legacy solutions,” he said. “We spent approximately 20 hours each week managing backups when what we really needed was simpler, streamlined data protection. Evergy is part of the national electricity grid, so reliability, resiliency and cyber security are always top of mind. Veeam helps us check all those boxes.“

Veeam delivers what legacy backup failed to deliver: hardware and storage neutrality, image-level backup and fast, easy recovery. Veeam also checks all compliance requirements: Backups are encrypted, recoverable and only accessible to members of the IT team who have been granted permission. Furthermore, Veeam offers functionality for Evergy’s future: a simple, affordable way to archive backups in cloud storage.

“We plan to utilize Veeam to take advantage of Azure Archive storage to provide a better way to archive backups to the cloud,” Adams said. “Not only could Veeam simplify and automate this process for us, but there would also be an annual time and cost savings realized because Veeam is more manageable and affordable than legacy backup.“

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