hVIVO is a rapidly growing specialist contract research organisation (CRO) and the world leader in testing infectious and respiratory disease vaccines and antivirals using human challenge clinical trials. It provides end-to-end early clinical development services to a broad and longstanding client base of biopharma companies, including very large global pharma customers. Based in London, hVIVO is highly IT-centric: volunteers are processed on a computer from the moment they arrive, and the booking and results application follows them around the building.

hVIVO runs on its IT systems. When a volunteer comes through the door they are processed on a computer, and the application that books people in and records their results follows them around the building. Without redundancy, the fallback for doctors and nurses tracking patients is paper, so IT Operations Director Paul Beshaw and his team needed technology that was resilient, regularly tested and fit for purpose at both the application and hardware level.

The company's backup arrangement did not meet that standard. hVIVO had used the same supplier for a long time, and the service had become antiquated and clunky to use. Moving away from it gave the team an opportunity to rethink how backups were used: how long backup data actually needed to be kept, and how recovery of that data could be simplified.

Disaster recovery came later. Operating in London, the business could never be sure what would happen next, and it needed a plan for a larger event that would let it get systems working again without a cumbersome process. Any solution also had to keep clinical and personal patient data encrypted and secure, satisfy non-technical senior management, and support the Standard Operating Procedures and audits that hVIVO's global pharma customers expect.

hVIVO selected Databarracks to provide Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). The backup service encrypts clinical and personal data so that, if anyone captured it, it would be useless to them. The DRaaS element gives the business a tested route to recover data quickly in the event of a larger problem, with enough assurance for senior management to sign off on the approach.

During migration, Databarracks helped hVIVO collect its historical data back from the incumbent supplier so that a complete set of backup data was imported rather than starting from a fixed point in time, which had been one of the team's biggest concerns. Questions such as how database servers would be backed up and how often were resolved through a running problem list that the project team reviewed week to week. A Databarracks project manager tracked progress and kept the project moving to its delivery point.

Databarracks also trained hVIVO's IT team on the new technology, which Beshaw considers the largest benefit of the project. The team's feedback was positive, and engineers were quickly able to carry out many backup and restore tasks themselves. A daily backup email now gives the team a quick visual check, where an empty report means everything has worked and only overruns or partial jobs surface for attention.

• Clinical and personal patient data is encrypted and securely backed up, useless to anyone who captured it
• Complete historical backup set migrated from the incumbent supplier, avoiding a gap in retention
• DRaaS gives hVIVO a tested path to recover quickly from a larger event
• IT team trained on the platform and able to handle backups and restores themselves
• Daily backup email provides a quick visual check that jobs have completed
• Documented backup, restore and DR processes satisfy SOPs, auditors and global pharma customers