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Singapore’s Inovuus Technologies has partnered up with cloud data protection and management solution vendor Druva to help secure more than 3,000 endpoints for Singapore-based energy and urban development company Sembcorp.
Sembcorp’s IT service management team launched a cloud-first strategy in 2017 and began migrating from on-premises servers to a Microsoft Azure-based cloud solution.
Since then, the company has used a suite of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud-native technologies to meet business needs.
As part of its cloud strategy, Sembcorp's IT team migrated on premises Microsoft Exchange to Microsoft 365, but needed a reliable way to back up the data.
At the time, the team relied on the default Microsoft litigation elements and email journaling, but felt exposed and needed better data protection, according to Nigel Watson, global head of IT shared services at Sembcorp Industries.
“We had a compelling event where an executive’s calendar got deleted and it took several days to restore,” Watson said. “We didn’t have an appropriate disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity planning (BCP) program in place to recover quickly for such specific events.
“Sure, journaling captures every single email, but it doesn’t retain folder structures or calendaring, so we essentially had to build a mailbox back from scratch,” he added.
The Sembcorp IT team began a search for a cloud-native solution that could make data retrieval simpler and quicker, ultimately settling on Druva’s offering to secure 3,000-plus endpoints for Microsoft 365 data protection.
“With Druva, we pay one licence fee per person and that includes everything — the platform, the individual user licence, and the storage,” Watson said. “Druva gives us a higher level of security with end-to-end encryption, guaranteed durability and availability and allows Sembcorp IT to meet our service level agreements (SLAs) with our constituents.”
Druva partnered with Inovuus Technologies on the project, with the Singapore integrator and Druva value-added distributor taking a lead in the proof of concept (POC) process and facilitating detailed business and technical discussions across multiple stakeholders within Sembcorp IT teams across Singapore, China, India and Sembcorp’s HQ IT and security teams based in the UK.
Established in 2000, Inovuus started out as a pure IT system Integration company providing computer hardware, software, networking and IT outsource services. Over time, the company has become a specialist in the area of data protection, partnering with Druva in 2011.
Now a value-added distributor for Druva, Inovuus’ key focus today is to promote and market Druva in Singapore and the region through its various channel partner programs.
Post deployment, Inovuus continued to provide ongoing support on product queries, helping to strengthen Druva’s relationship with Sembcorp and drive more adoption.
It is understood that Inovuus engaged C-level discussions with Sembcorp on the risks of unprotected Microsoft 365 data and how Druva could help protect that workload from external and internal threats.
This led to another successful POC round and Microsoft 365 being added to Sembcorp’s cloud data protection portfolio.
“We are delighted to help Sembcorp protect their global workforce users’ endpoint devices and Microsoft 365 data protection,” said Gerald Lek, Inovuus managing director. “Druva’s cloud-native platform helps deliver a solid business continuity plan for end-users and we are proud to be working alongside with Druva.”
In September last year, Druva revealed it had increased data centre workload revenue by more than 100 per cent during the prior 12 months across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), supported by an expanding ecosystem of specialist partners.
Built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the independent software vendor (ISV) has worked with the channel to help more than 700 customers modernise legacy hardware and software solutions across the region, with key clients including NTT Data, McConnell Dowell and Adani Wilmar.
“As businesses in APJ adopt remote operating models, there is an urgency to adopt new technologies, maintain business continuity and secure organisational and dispersed workforce data,” said former Druva APJ regional sales vice president Pete Yamasaki, who was replaced by Scott Morris late last year, said at the time.
“Regardless of the industry, sector or legacy, companies are turning to the cloud for the scale and technology it has to offer."
