Case Study: Collège Boréal achieves 99% data reduction and 60% faster backups with Dell Technologies' Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA)

Saving time and money on data protection to focus on what matters — students

Collège Boréal, a French-language college with 42 campus sites across Ontario, faced growing backup windows and increasing strain on its small IT team after rapid virtualization—its IBM Spectrum Protection system was labor‑intensive and costly. Seeking a more efficient, easy-to-manage solution, Collège Boréal selected Dell Technologies’ Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) to modernize backup and recovery.

Dell Technologies deployed IDPA at a primary campus with replication to a recovery site to protect critical workloads (student information systems, SQL Server, SharePoint, Dynamics). The appliance reduced 20.5 TB to 95.7 GB (about 99% less data, reported as a 219% compression factor), cut backups from five hours to two, trimmed backup rack units by 30%, lowered power and support costs, and was brought into production in 2½ days versus an estimated three weeks—delivering measurable savings and future-proofing the college’s backup infrastructure.

Collège Boréal

Benoit Bonin

IT Director