Geffen Mesher is a Portland-based accounting and consulting firm founded in 1933. It offers a full suite of financial strategy, accounting and CPA services, operating primarily in the Northwest and serving individuals, privately held businesses and nonprofit organisations. The firm ranks among the top one percent of CPA firms in the United States. A three-person IT team supports about 150 users.

Geffen Mesher already used Veeam for on-premises backup, but it was also paying a local managed service provider to back up certain critical servers both on site and off site. Bill Schneller, the firm's director of information technology, described the arrangement as doubling up the work and paying for it. With a three-person team supporting about 150 users, the firm wanted to outsource those duties to a competent provider for less than it could do the job in-house.

The bigger gap was Microsoft Office 365. Office offered little backup protection for OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint data, which meant Geffen Mesher had no safety net in place. Schneller noted that Office replicates data rather than backing it up: if something is deleted it is gone, and files encrypted by ransomware would simply be replicated throughout the Office architecture.

With malware, ransomware and phishing attacks increasing, the firm set three goals: enable secure and reliable access to data, reduce backup costs, and prepare for growing cybersecurity threats.

Schneller first explored handling the firm's core backups and its Office 365 backups in-house, but the infrastructure requirements proved too costly. Geffen Mesher instead chose a cloud-based backup provider and highly recommended Veeam partner, 11:11 Systems (then iland), for 11:11 Cloud Backup for Veeam Cloud Connect and 11:11 Cloud Backup for Office 365.

The decision followed due diligence that included conversations with other customers and the firm's Veeam representatives. 11:11 Systems was an established player in the space and also offered 11:11 Cloud DRaaS as a future option, which other vendors did not. The move to a subscription service also suited a firm run by CPAs, who favour an operating-expense model that makes costs easier to track and plan.

When the migration hit an unforeseen speed bump that threatened Schneller's deadlines, he worked with his 11:11 account manager and support team to resolve it. The support team made sure all workloads were securely moved and followed up constantly. Schneller's team met all of its deadlines, and Geffen Mesher has since signed a longer-term contract with 11:11 Systems.

• Saved several hundred dollars a month without making many changes, simply by switching to 11:11 Cloud Backup
• Closed the Office 365 protection gap with long-term retention for OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint data
• Eliminated duplicate MSP backup work and moved backup spending to OPEX pricing
• Gained offsite protection from ransomware, cyberattacks and other data loss events
• Met every migration deadline with 24/7/365 support and later signed a longer-term contract