R Cable Y Telecomunicaciones Galicia

“R” is the trade name under which the firm R Cable y Telecomunicaciones Galicia S.A. operates. It is a prestigious cable and Internet service provider (ISP) that has been operating in Galicia for more than 20 years, providing comprehensive Internet, television and fixed and mobile telephony services.

Moreover, R is also currently offering infrastructure (data center) business services with hosting and cloud solutions. Headquartered in A Coruña, R has its own fibre optic network that reaches nearly a million homes and businesses in more than 100 towns and cities throughout the Galician region.

The rise of cloud computing has led R to orienting its services toward the cloud and implementing new trends such as virtualisation and hardware abstraction in order to offer cloud services.

“We have a very wide range of communications equipment: Metro, VPNs, cable accesses… and our added value lies in offering services that are adapted to the needs of each customer,” explains Luis Manteiga, Systems Engineer at R.

A flexible and reliable environment to offer customers valuable services

“Our purpose has always been for our business services not to seem like a “commodity” as the main offering to consumers,” says Alberto Díaz, Product Manager at the firm. “We wanted to add real value to the service by offering the latest trends (remote backup, filing, virtualization) and improving user experience as much as possible.”

In 2013, R published an RFP with clear requirements: to reduce the backup window in order to manage large volumes of information; to achieve a solid and stable remote backup environment; to simplify data and application management; a multi-tenant solution to enable comprehensive data management; and a volume licensing model.

“The volume of data to be managed had grown exponentially in very short space of time, so we needed a solution that would truly support all of this information,” explains Luis Manteiga. “Yet we also wanted to take advantage of all of its features to add value to the services we offer.”

The goal of the project was to make a backup platform available to its customers as a service (BaaS) and offer disaster recovery (DRaaS) using the same model. Back then the entity had a “legacy” solution that did not cover all of the organization’s requirements.

An ideal data management and protection solution for ISPs

Several providers submitted proposals. They included the Spanish integrator Acuntia, with an offer based on the Commvault software, which is an ideal solution for ISPs (Internet Service Providers), yet goes even further.

The Acuntia proposal ended up winning. “We went with their solution for a number of reasons,” explains Luis Manteiga. “On the one hand, the technology and functionalities offered by Commvault, which fit into our plans from the very beginning. And, on the other hand, the reliability of the integrator, as Acuntia is a partner we’ve been working with for some time.”

The platform includes media agents that handle data protection and storage as well as control the distribution of the work. They include Endpoint Protection and secure File Sync & Share, which makes it possible to recover and share information created with any device quickly and securely through “personal cloud” access – and Enterprise Data Protection to protect corporate client data.

The project anticipates the implementation of all of the software modules, including data protection in virtualised systems with systems such as VM protection, VM Archive and VM Life Cycle Management, instant systems using IntelliSnap technology, second copies, deduplication, filing Disaster Recovery, data analysis, report generation and compliance, among others. “The more value we get from the Commvault solution, the better the services are that we offer.”

Greater flexibility and a new world of services for customers

With Commvault’s software platform, R now has a “modern management of data” system that supports the backup of large volumes of information, optimizing storage, and improving recovery times and points (RTO / RPO), integrating with existing cloud services and covering the new scenarios in mobility.

R can now flexibly manage the growth in the volume of information it handles using the unified console which completely controls the data backup and recovery processes. “The backup windows have dropped,” says Luis Manteiga, “largely because of the use of IntelliSnap functionality. So much so that backups which took 40 hours before now can be done in less than 8 hours.”

Besides achieving a more flexible infrastructure in this way, R can offer this remote backup solution as an added value service to its customers (including SMEs) with full guarantees and competitive prices.

Technicians at R also appreciate the power and functionality of the software. “The improved service quality leads to higher levels of customer loyalty, “ says Alberto Díaz. “Plus, it has given us the flexibility to launch new services easily and quickly which also leads to a higher potential for the attraction of new customers.”

The solution’s multi-tenancy features now make information management in the cloud easier and more flexible. “We’ve seen significant improvements in the management of our cloud platform,’ explains Luis Manteiga, “since we can process the data comprehensively from a single point and adapt the solution offered to each customer in accordance with their needs.”

The use of features like VM Life Cycle Management has also led to lower resource consumption as a result of the use of virtual machines (VM). With pre-designed and/or customised policies, the VM life cycle becomes automatic and that enhances the use of the resources and reduces the impact on management time which provides the guarantee that the service level agreements (SLAs) will be respected.