Case Study: Soletanche Freyssinet Group achieves high availability and rapid disaster recovery with Veeam

Civil Engineering Group Builds Framework for High Availability with Veeam and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Storage; Intensifies Competitiveness in RFPs

Soletanche Freyssinet Group, a global leader in soil, structural and nuclear engineering, consolidated its UK IT from 25 sites into two data centers, virtualizing roughly 400 VMware VMs with 220TB of data. The operation relied on multiple legacy tape-based backup tools that were slow, unreliable and provided no visibility, leaving the business exposed to costly downtime and unable to meet SLAs or demonstrate disaster-recovery readiness in RFPs.

The UK team deployed Veeam Availability Suite with HPE 3PAR StoreServ, StoreOnce and StoreEver tape libraries to back up from storage snapshots, replicate critical VMs between sites, and retain deduplicated backups locally (≈80% dedupe) with offsite tape copies. The new setup enabled fast restores (Veeam Explorer and Instant VM Recovery), established SLAs/RTPO, saved about £50,000 annually in tape costs, and delivered monitoring and capacity planning that improved DR confidence and competitiveness in bids.

Soletanche Freyssinet Group

Rod Blackie

Director