Case Study
Infinitum Adds Geo-Compliant Cloud Storage at Scale with Wasabi and Veeam
Infinitum Technologies is a managed service and security provider servicing small and mid-sized businesses in Western Australia. The company specializes in financial services, engineering, and manufacturing industries with a strategic focus on local and regional government entities around the country. With customers spread across a wide region and various security and compliance needs to meet, Infinitum needed to build a more robust storage and recovery system that could scale strategically while offering users a transparent look into costs. And it needed something fast.
Challenge: Secure, robust, budget-conscious infrastructure that scales effectively
“Our biggest pain point was the availability of actual infrastructure itself,” said Lachlan Britt, Infinitum’s CEO. “We were using a collection of our own private cloud infrastructure or backup services, redundancy, disaster recovery, various bits and pieces.” The COVID pandemic created another challenge when obtaining additional infrastructure became difficult due to supply chain shortages. “That made scaling and expanding a problem, so we started to look at alternate solutions that would be more effective for our customers and for us,” Britt said. Cost played a significant role, too. “Everyone's looking at their cloud spend and budgets are a little bit tighter than before,” he said. “So definitely cost-effective tools were a key part of what we were looking for.”
Wasabi + Veeam: Hot cloud storage with no hidden fees and streamlined data backup
For Infinitum, the solution came down to budget transparency, ease of use, and security. “We had looked at some of the other hyperscalers' offerings, but finding that happy medium in terms of getting the data back out is always difficult with the ingress/egress charges,” Britt said. “We found Wasabi’s billing model for active storage and deleted storage easier to budget for clients, and easier for us to stay on top of to ensure that everyone's getting the best bang for their buck.” Infinitum chose Wasabi’s cost-effective cloud storage platform with Veeam backup and recovery to streamline account management, budgeting, and security compliance requirements. The company uses on-premises storage infrastructure in its data center environments for instant accessibility, and everything else that needs to be archived or accessed frequently goes into the Wasabi cloud.
Wasabi not having egress fees made a big difference for our clients – what they could budget for, and what they could leverage their storage for, without worrying about getting their data back out of the platform.”
– Lachlan Britt, CEO, Infinitum
“Our most common utilization for Wasabi is Microsoft 365 SharePoint, OneDrive, and email data backups,” Britt said. “Having that storage function and being able to access data without extra fees has just become a really easy service to offer our customers. It’s scalable, budgetable, and it gives them that peace of mind that they've got a copy of all their data whenever they need it. Even if something like Microsoft 365 goes down, we've got a copy of that data, and we can restore it to an on-premises mailbox or other disc.” Backups are facilitated through Veeam. “Having Wasabi natively integrated with Veeam’s backup and replication platform has definitely been a nice win for our clients as well as ourselves,” Britt said.
Account Control Manager
Infinitum leverages Wasabi Account Control Manager for customers with their own IT staff who need flexibility in managing some storage buckets. “That's been really essential for those larger clients,” Britt said. “They can spin up a bucket for dev testing and we don’t have to be in the middle. We just have a contract with them, and we show them: This is how much storage you've got, this is what it costs when you go over that storage. Beyond that, they've got free rein over how they utilize the platform.”
S3 Object Lock and compliance
Compliance is crucial for Infinitum customers that are required to store data for longer periods of time, particularly government and financial companies that have to comply with specific laws. Infinitum found S3 Object Lock helps its customers meet those compliance needs. “We ensure they really understand that their data is going to be stored and locked for that period of time,” Britt said. “Some of our clients have to hold onto data for seven years, and S3 Object Lock is a great option for that.” Having Wasabi services based in Australia provides a geolocation compliance advantage, as well. “We have people and clients spread all over the Asia-Pacific region, so from a government and industry requirements standpoint, getting that data closer to them as part of their disaster recovery strategy in multi-redundant locations is crucial,” Britt said. “And it’s definitely a big advantage for us that we were able to utilize Wasabi on a month to month basis rather than having to invest a large amount in capital infrastructure.”
“Wasabi helped us cut overhead, increase profit, and leverage our infrastructure more effectively for our clients.”
Since implementing Wasabi and Veeam, Infinitum has cut costs in its data centers and reassigned critical infrastructure for more operational tasks at scale, allowing the company to quickly and easily bring on bigger clients with sizable data backup needs. “We were able to spin up a 300-terabyte reserve capacity and sign on the customer for a one-year contract in less than 24 hours,” Britt said. “Cutting that sales process from quote to execution adds to our bottom line and gives us greater flexibility in what we can offer clients. Before Wasabi, that process was much longer and not nearly as efficient.”
What’s next for Infinitum?
As innovative technology markets grow, Infinitum sees a need for robust storage that can support massive datasets. “We’re exploring with some of our clients that have large data requirements when it comes to things like networked security video data,” Britt said. “Some of these other markets beyond traditional IT, such as security-focused AI and operational technology, will need greater flexibility, so the fact that Wasabi is coming out with solutions that target significant data needs puts it ahead of the curve.” “Wasabi has been a really fantastic product to implement, and the team behind it seems proactive in getting things done,” Britt added. “They’re clearly focused on developing and enhancing their product and solutions for customers, so I'm keen to see where we head with Wasabi over the next 24 months.”