The City of Moose Jaw is a municipality in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, with approximately 34,000 residents. Like many municipalities, it balances limited IT resources against the need to deliver services efficiently and safeguard critical data. Its technology is led by Information Services Manager Ryan Nelson, whose team was responsible for a legacy backup system that stored backups locally and replicated them to a nearby site with no warm recovery capability.

The City of Moose Jaw's legacy backup system had become insufficient for its growing needs. It relied on outdated software and hardware that were costly to maintain and offered limited functionality. Backups were stored locally and replicated to a nearby site, but there was no warm recovery capability, so a serious disruption would have meant a slow and uncertain return to service for the city and its residents.

The system also placed a significant maintenance burden on the IT team. Aging hardware and manual processes demanded constant attention, and the team wanted to stop spending its time babysitting backups and troubleshooting outdated systems.

Information Services Manager Ryan Nelson set out to find a scalable, reliable and cost-effective solution. He also wanted a partner rather than a vendor: a company that would offer a hands-on relationship, bring expertise, understand the specific challenges of a Canadian municipality and manage the transition without requiring the city's team to take on complex licensing or additional training.

Thrive provided a comprehensive suite of managed services to modernize the city's backup and disaster recovery processes. The cornerstone was Veeam Backup and Recovery, a turnkey solution that lets the city back up its data securely while enabling fast local recovery when needed. Thrive also implemented robust retention policies to manage and protect the city's growing Office 365 environment, including email and SharePoint, extending data protection across cloud-based workloads.

In addition to backups, Thrive delivered Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) with a warm site ready to maintain continuity during a disruption. The solution integrated with the city's existing VPN infrastructure, giving secure and reliable access to critical systems during continuity events.

Thrive's fully managed model removed the need for the city's IT team to manage complex licensing or invest in additional training. Through the transition, Thrive provided clear documentation, answered the team's questions and made sure the solutions worked within the city's environment. Nelson described the shift from an outdated, labor-intensive system to a modern, hands-off approach as happening almost overnight.

The relationship is continuing: Moose Jaw is now working with Thrive to fortify its cybersecurity as the next phase of the partnership.

• Outdated on-premises backup replaced with fully managed Veeam Backup and Recovery and fast local restores
• Office 365 email and SharePoint protected with retention policies managed by Thrive
• Warm-site DRaaS integrated with the city's VPN provides continuity during a disruption
• IT team no longer spends time babysitting backups or troubleshooting outdated systems
• City reports significant cost savings and improved operational efficiency
• Cybersecurity engagement with Thrive underway as the next phase of the partnership