CASE STUDY

Fortune 75 Insurer
Increases Resilience—and Saves $2M
Annually—
with Cohesity
Nationwide counts people as its most important resource—and data follows
close behind. Employees and agents rely on digital services to write new policies,
process claims, recommend investments, and more. Malfunctioning virtual
INDUSTRY
Insurance and Financial Services
USE CASE
Backup and Recovery, File and ObjectServices, Dev/Test
COHESITY SOLUTIONS
DataProtect, SmartFiles
DATA SOURCES
VMware, Isilon, Oracle, SQL Server
Physical Linux and Windows servers

machines (VMs) disrupt operations and the customer experience. By switching toCohesity’s next-gen data management platform, Nationwide sped up recovery ofVMs after large-scale data center outages from months to days, and from smaller
outages from hours to minutes.

Challenges
Nationwide’s customers and agents now expect to interact digitally—anytime, anywhere. “We’ve
been investing heavily to modernize our IT systems to meet new expectations and prepare forgrowth,” says Guru Vasudeva, SVP and CTO, Infrastructure and Operations at Nationwide. Efficient
data management is a top priority. Nationwide’s IT team backs up and secures more than 21
petabytes of data running in three data centers and two public clouds. Data volume grows by 10% to
15% every year.
The IT team wanted to make sure they could quickly restore VMs after a data center outage, security

Key Benefits

incident, or even an operating system patch gone awry. “With our legacy backup system, restoring
thousands of virtual machines after a large-scale outage would have taken months,” says Rich• $2 million annual savings

Alexander, AVP of Technology at Nationwide. “If you’re down more than a week, you’re probably• 75% faster migration to thejeopardizing your company’s ability to stay in business.”

Cohesity platform comparedto the previous migration,smoothing the transition• Simpler IT operations thanks toa unified platform for backup
and recovery, file and object
storage, and cloud backups• Much faster data recovery—now
just days instead of months forlarge-scale outages““We needed a next-gen data management platform, and Cohesity stood apartbecause of its ease of use, rapid recovery at large scale, and strong cyberprotections.”– Guru Vasudeva, SVP and CTO, Infrastructure and Operations at Nationwide

CASE STUDY | Nationwide

SolutionVMs in just three minutes, a feat that would have taken days withAfter conducting a side-by-side comparison of leading dataCohesity has saved us from having to add staff,” says Alexander. “It’smanagement solutions, Nationwide selected Cohesity. “We neededa next-gen data management platform, and Cohesity stood apartthe previous backup system. “By simplifying backups and restores,
also improved work-life balance, a corporate value at Nationwide.”

because of its ease of use, rapid recovery at large scale, and strong

The IT team is currently moving cloud backups to Cohesity. They’recyber protections,” Vasudeva says.

considering Cohesity’s Data Management as a Service (DMaaS) to

Nationwide started by backing up the thousands of VMs, databases,and files in its three data centers. Next, they replaced the legacy

reduce on-premises infrastructure and the operational overhead thatcomes with it.

network-attached storage with Cohesity SmartFiles, using it forVasudeva concludes, “Cohesity has helped us modernize ourunstructured data like scanned documents and images.

data management and strengthen our security posture. We view

Transitioning data center backups from the legacy system toCohesity’s next-gen platform took just six months, compared to twoyears the last time the company migrated to a new platform. “OurCohesity as a strategic partner that collaborates with us on nextgen data management and is here to help us throughout our digitaltransformation.”teams were very happy because long transitions are painful,” says

Summing up, Nationwide has seen the following benefits withAlexander.

Cohesity:Results• $2 million annual savings

By switching to Cohesity, Nationwide strengthened business• 75% faster migration to the Cohesity platform compared to thecontinuity, lowered costs, and enabled a small team to manage moredata with less effort.
“Cohesity can help us recover from a large-scale outage affecting
thousands of virtual machines within hours—compared to weeks
or months with our legacy system,” Alexander says. “Recovering
hundreds of virtual machines after a failed operating system patch
now takes minutes instead of weeks.”

previous migration, smoothing the transition• Simpler IT operations thanks to a unified platform for backup
and recovery, file and object storage, and cloud backups• Much faster data recovery, now just days instead of months forlarge-scale outages

About Nationwide
Nationwide sold its first policy in 1926. Today it’s a Fortune 100

Costs dropped significantly. “With Cohesity, we pay $2 million less percompany providing a full range of insurance and financial services.

year for backup than we did for our legacy solution,” says Alexander.

Products include car, motorcycle, homeowners, pet, farm, life, andNationwide’s backup engineers, who previously juggled 90
management interfaces for backup alone, appreciate managing datafrom a single pane of glass. Recently, they restored four corrupted

commercial insurance. The company also offers annuities, mutual
funds, retirement plans and specialty health services. Its mission:
protect people, businesses, and futures with extraordinary care.

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