Case Study: Lake Land College avoids a 300% cost hike and cuts data recovery from days to minutes with Veeam

Lake Land College avoids potential 300% cost hike with data freedom from Veeam

Lake Land College, a public community college in Mattoon, Illinois serving about 8,700 students, needed a cost‑effective way to keep growing online and on‑campus programs running while ensuring 24/7 data availability. Their previous backup tool didn’t provide sufficient control, and after VMware licensing spiked by 300% they sought a solution to avoid unexpected costs and speed up responses to FOIA and user data requests.

The college deployed Veeam Data Platform and Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, implemented a 3-2-1-1-0 strategy, and migrated from VMware to Proxmox VE. As a result, backups (50–60 TB daily) became error‑free, recovery times fell from days to minutes, mailbox and file restores are fast and granular, resource use improved through easy integration, and the move unlocked the opportunity to avoid the 300% cost increase.

Lake Land College

James Westendorf

Director of Technical Services