Case Study: United Way of Pierce County achieves rapid, reliable data recovery with Veritas Technologies' Backup Exec

Backup Exec helps a nonprofit change lives

United Way of Pierce County, a Tacoma nonprofit that relies on data to direct programs, fundraising, and a helpline, was hamstrung by slow, costly legacy backups. Incremental tape backups and long recovery times (hours to restore a single file) threatened the organization’s ability to connect people with services and respond to community needs.

Using a TechSoup connection, the United Way implemented Veritas Backup Exec to protect about 700 GB with disk-primary and tape-secondary backups. Nightly incrementals now finish in a few hours, weekly fulls fit a 24-hour window, file restores drop to under 10 minutes, and Backup Exec has delivered a 100% restore success rate over nine years—helping the nonprofit recover from ransomware and a sprinkler-system disaster and ensuring reliable service to the community.

United Way of Pierce County

Dan McFarland

IT Director