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

The Challenge

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 for growth,” 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 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 Alexander, AVP of Technology at Nationwide. “If you’re down more than a week, you’re probably jeopardizing your company’s ability to stay in business.”

The Solution

After conducting a side-by-side comparison of leading data management solutions, Nationwide selected Cohesity. “We needed a next-gen data management platform, and Cohesity stood apart because of its ease of use, rapid recovery at large scale, and strong cyber protections,” Vasudeva says.

Nationwide started by backing up the thousands of VMs, databases, and files in its three data centers. Next, they replaced the legacy network-attached storage with Cohesity SmartFiles, using it for unstructured data like scanned documents and images.

Transitioning data center backups from the legacy system to Cohesity’s next-gen platform took just six months, compared to two years the last time the company migrated to a new platform. “Our teams were very happy because long transitions are painful,” says Alexander

The Results

By switching to Cohesity, Nationwide strengthened business continuity, lowered costs, and enabled a small team to manage more data 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.”

Costs dropped significantly. “With Cohesity, we pay $2 million less per year for backup than we did for our legacy solution,” says Alexander.

Nationwide’s backup engineers, who previously juggled 90 management interfaces for backup alone, appreciate managing data from a single pane of glass. Recently, they restored four corrupted VMs in just three minutes, a feat that would have taken days with the previous backup system. “By simplifying backups and restores, Cohesity has saved us from having to add staff,” says Alexander. “It’s also improved work-life balance, a corporate value at Nationwide.”

The IT team is currently moving cloud backups to Cohesity. They’re considering Cohesity’s Data Management as a Service (DMaaS) to reduce on-premises infrastructure and the operational overhead that comes with it.

Vasudeva concludes, “Cohesity has helped us modernize our data management and strengthen our security posture. We view Cohesity as a strategic partner that collaborates with us on nextgen data management and is here to help us throughout our digital transformation.”

Key Benefits

• $2 million annual savings
• 75% faster migration to the Cohesity platform compared to the 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 for large-scale outages

About Nationwide

Nationwide sold its first policy in 1926. Today it’s a Fortune 100 company providing a full range of insurance and financial services. Products include car, motorcycle, homeowners, pet, farm, life, and 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.