How a Cancer Charity Found the Right Backup and Recovery Solution

A Growing Organization Faces New IT Challenges

Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) is a national, community-based organization of volunteers with the mission of eradicating cancer and the enhancement of the quality of life of people living with cancer. Senior IT Manager, Auldwin Armstrong, has worked for CCS for 10+ years, watching the IT department grow quickly alongside with the Society. During this time, the expanding business and innovations in technology presented new challenges for the IT department. One major challenge? Proving to the Leadership Team that the organization would survive in the case of a data disaster. Armstrong struggled with this task. “I could not pass my audits. I couldn’t show that they were being backed up.”

The organization needed a backup and recovery solution that wouldn’t break the bank. As a donor-driven organization, every $5 spent is the equivalent of tendoors being knocked on for donations. The less administrative costs, the more money goes towards CCS’s mission.

For challenges such as these, CCS has worked with Sysoft Computer Consultants Limited, a Toronto-based managed IT service provider, for nearly a decade. Armstrong learned about Datto’s backup, recovery and business continuity solutions from Sysoft’s Scott Weingust who had successfully implemented the solution at CCS’s National office. For Weingust, switching the Society over to Datto was a no-brainer. Datto “is a lot simpler to operate and to maintain” in comparison to the Society’s existing backup and continuity product at the time. Catching wind of this, Armstrong requested a demo and the rest is history.

Datto Makes Backup and Restores Easy

Datto is a good fit for CCS for many reasons.“The Datto solution fell nicely in line with what we wanted to do but could not afford to do,” says Armstrong. The solution provides the team with the ability to do operational backups locally and to perform disaster recovery backups by replicating in the cloud. They no longer have to spin up a secondary contract with another vendor in order to perform DR. Armstrong is also happy with the 1-year data retention policy.

“What I really liked about Datto was that it wasn’t just a box for me to be able to do my operational backups, it came with cloud storage, which is a big piece of it for us. The cloud as a destination has been a big direction for us.”

Another perk? “The box that we’re backing up on is not the same storage area network that my production data is on is also a big win. I do not like to backup to the same location that I’m protecting. Datto just happened to be the perfect fit for us,” Armstrong said.

“The Datto solution fell nicely in line with what we wanted to do but could not afford to do.”
Auldwin Armstrong, Senior IT Manager

The IT Manager has been so happy with Datto that he advocated for it to be implemented at the Society’s BC division, CCS’s third largest group.

“Part of good governance in IT is that, you’re not backing up data for the sake of backing up, you’re backing up for the sake of recovery.” Armstrong no longer worries about disaster recovery at Canadian Cancer Society.