A Company of Helpers, in Need of Some Help

It was supposed to be a simple system update. The year was coming to a close and Cam Cox, IT Systems Administrator at BELAY Solutions, was going through the standard process of remotely updating the team’s Macs with the new operating system until bugs in the process bricked close to a third of the team’s machines. He needed a solution, and fast, before BELAY’s 2,000-some contractors needed any help from the corporate team.

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Like any IT administrator, Cox was seasoned by high-pressure work. He joined BELAY Solutions during a period of rapid expansion; in his first year, the company grew by 50%. Straight out of the gate, Cox found himself overseeing the technical needs of more than 150 remote employees as well as an expanding pool of almost 2,000 virtual staffing contractors stationed across the country. Even though the contractors use client-issued and managed computers, BELAY’s in-depth onboarding process means that each employee generates a cache of important files about each contractor.

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The BELAY team conducts a series of personality tests to ensure that each hire—whether they’re an internal employee or a contractor being placed with a client—is a perfect match. Then there are hundreds of resumes to manage, financial information, contracts, and more. All that documentation adds up quickly, and protecting it from accidental deletion, computer crashes, theft, disasters, and accidents is absolutely critical to the BELAY team’s day-to-day duties. That’s why BELAY Solutions decided to prioritize workstation backups to protect the data and ensure uninterrupted access for its remote staff.

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Protecting the Modern Remote Workforce

When Cox first started, BELAY had been using another provider for online storage backup as part of a package of apps provided by one of the company’s tech vendors. Cox remembers that he could tell right away the existing solution was limited. “Whenever I wanted to know something about our previous provider, I would have to contact two people because the vendor was working through their support team. I never had the ability to log on and see for myself.”

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Within a few months, Cox was tasked with finding a new solution that was a better fit for BELAY. The BELAY team could see that the rising popularity in remote work and contract workforces was no passing fad, and they needed a backup solution that could grow with them. Scalability and convenient self-service capabilities were at the top of Cox’s wish list, but so was ease of use; BELAY is an all-Mac company, and some staff members were transitioning from lifetimes using PCs. Cox knew he needed a backup solution that was easy to deploy, explain, and understand for employees with all levels of technical experience.

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Cox compared the feeling he had during his initial calls with Backblaze to the way BELAY runs its own onboarding processes: “Backblaze made sure we built a connection. On that first call, you know if someone’s trying to sell you something or really trying to help you find a solution.” Things moved quickly from there—just a week after they started discussing their needs, BELAY Solutions was ready to move forward with Backblaze Business Backup.

One Less Deployment and One Less Application to Worry About

The BELAY IT team also made the most of Backblaze’s free trial period by using the 15 days to conduct internal tests before deploying. “Backblaze Business Backup was so simple, when we rolled it out to the rest of the team we had no problems,” Cox says.

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Since the full company rollout, any new BELAY hires meet with Cox to set up their system access. “I have never had a single time on one of those calls that anyone’s ever had a problem with the Backblaze setup process.” Now Cox is working to include Backblaze Business Backup in BELAY’s remote management package (through device management platform Mosyle) so that when laptops are sent out to new hires, they’re ready to go with the Backblaze workstation backup client. “That’s going to be huge for us,” Cox says. “That’s one less app I have to help them download during the onboarding call.”

The Moment of Truth: Turning a Nightmare Into an Easy Restore

It wasn’t long after the company-wide rollout that Cox found himself wondering if Backblaze could be the solution to a very immediate problem. Rejoining Cox on that fateful December 2021 night, we find him living the prototypical IT nightmare. “The update was messing up people’s computers terribly, to the point where the dreaded black terminal screen was all people could conjure on their machines,” Cox recalls. “Some of our staff have never used a Mac, and they’ve never seen a screen like that in their lives.”'

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Suddenly Cox was receiving frantic calls from panicked BELAY employees across the country. He knew he needed to overnight spare laptops, but those devices didn’t have any data on them. Since Cox hadn’t yet had occasion to perform a restore, he reached out to the Backblaze team for support.

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“Backblaze was so helpful and showed me exactly what to do,” Cox says. “Our team members were able to get their data back literally the next morning and get right back to work.” Crisis averted.

Gratitude for a Clear Runway to Scaling

BELAY Solutions has experienced impressive growth alongside the increasing popularity of remote work post-pandemic. By 2023, Cox expects he’ll be supporting as many as 200 employees. “It looks like virtual work wasn’t just a trend; it’s one of our new ways of working,” Cox says. And the more the team expands, the more Cox appreciates the benefits of Backblaze Business Backup. Even if employees just delete or lose an important file, it’s easy for them to recover their data either independently or with just a little help from Cox and his IT team.

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In addition to that scalability, Cox has also seen even the most tech-troubled BELAY employees get comfortable with how easy Backblaze Business Backup is to use. “They don’t even reach out when I send them a spare computer; they know what to do.”

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When Cox asks if employees need help with Business Backup, they confidently respond they’ve got it covered. “I had no clue how helpful it was going to be when I first started using it, but after dealing with Apple upgrades and subsequent crashes for about two months, Backblaze was my favorite app. It still is.”

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Cox says that working with Backblaze reminds him of the core values that BELAY holds dear. “The definition of teamwork at BELAY is we run to each other’s problems, challenges, and opportunities. I definitely think Backblaze did that.” Gratitude is another: “At the end of last year I was talking about which apps I was most thankful for—I said Backblaze Business Backup was one of them.”