UK Train Operator Greater Anglia Selects iland and Veeam

iland Internet Solutions Corporation announced that Greater Anglia has chosen its Secure Cloud Backup for Veeam Cloud Connect and its Secure Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 to protect its infrastructure investments and as an initial step in its long-term cloud strategy.

Greater Anglia is a major (TOC) in the UK, offering commuter and intercity services at 133 stations across the region. Its rail network ranges from its Central London terminus, Liverpool Street station, to Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, parts of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire and throughout the East of England.

In 2021, the company was named Train Operator of the Year at the Rail Business Awards for the second consecutive time due, in part, to record levels of improvement in train punctuality, a new fleet that benefited the customer experience, station upgrades and ticketing initiatives. It has also been awarded a Gold Accreditation through the IdeasUK Innovation Assessment.

Greater Anglia’s cloud journey, according to Himesh Patel, head of IT service delivery, began with 2 massive investments. First, the company decided to replace its entire fleet. The new trains are due for completion at the end of 2021. Second, it decided to upgrade its WAN, which was low-bandwidth and couldn’t allow for cross file sharing. Both were vast undertakings, which required a lot of IT strategy and preparation. During that process of evaluation and innovation, Patel saw an opportunity to transition to the cloud and seized it.

“Our new trains are deploying more modern technology and infrastructure, which meant we had a lot of legacy applications that were defunct when the new applications came in. From there, we began looking to push a lot of applications either to the cloud or to suppliers in their own cloud environments,” he said.

The company’s first steps to the cloud began with a mandate to secure its investment in Microsoft 365, including OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint – an upgrade that coincided with the new network. Patel and his team knew full well that Microsoft offered little in terms of backup protection and to make matters worse, malicious attacks, like malware, ransomware and phishing, were on the rise.

He selected Secure Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 and Secure Cloud Backup for Veeam Cloud Connect to address those concerns. With iland and Veeam, Greater Anglia could protect its critical data from internal and external cybersecurity threats and reduce the total cost of data protection and retention, while also moving its overall backup strategy toward the cloud and away from outdated technologies like physical tape.

“iland Secure Cloud Backup is an elegant solution, particularly because of its integration with Veeam. The overall solutions architecture is what we were looking for – something we can certainly build on in the future,” said Patel.

He continued: “All the conversations we’ve had with the iland team have been very transparent, very up front. There’s been nothing hidden in the whole process. Our requirements were listened to and were factored in. The most important thing for us is building a partnership with a reliable provider. We’re not in it for the short term, it’s a long-term partnership.“

“At iland, we strive to form long-lasting customer partnerships with the goal of crafting cloud strategies that address their immediate needs, while also planning for the future. We’re proud to consider Great Anglia such a partner as well as one of the more innovative and forward-thinking companies we’ve had the pleasure of working with,” said Johnny Carpenter, VP sales for EMEA, iland. “With iland Secure Cloud Backup for Veeam and Secure Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365, Greater Anglia has been able to seamlessly transition away from legacy hardware, ensure the protection of its network investments and implement the resources and proven technology necessary to succeed on its transition to the cloud.“

Before partnering with iland, Greater Anglia had been backing up its mission-critical applications on premises via backup-to-tape, a technology that would not provide the flexibility and scalability the company needed as its business grew. Between the time, energy and resources spent on non-innovative maintenance, like replacing and storing old tapes, Patel and his lean, 10-person IT team, also had less time to further business objectives.

With the move to the iland’s cloud backup, however, valuable IT resources could be freed up to help the business complete more profitable business objectives, like rolling out the new trains, IT infrastructure and associated applications, WAN, and new customer information screens at each station.

“From a strategy point of view, I think cloud backup is excellent,” said Patel. “It just moves everything up and out, removing our responsibility onsite. It will allow us to remove a lot of legacy hardware eventually.“

According to him, the company’s latest innovations, especially its move to the cloud with iland Secure Cloud Backup, are just the beginning. Though they started off small, he said they’ve already started internal discussions about migrating everything to the cloud with IaaS on iland Secure Cloud. He’s looking forward to being able to utilize modern platforms to leverage economies of scale and drive cost efficiencies.

“We’re committed to going through that cloud journey. Right now, we’re trying to tick the right boxes in terms of the sort of people we want to do business with and have long term business relationships with,” said Patel. “iland fits that bill.“