TSB wanted to strengthen its approach to backup and recovery while creating an environment capable of supporting new applications, workloads and its longer-term move towards cloud. Just as importantly, it wanted to reduce the day-to-day operational burden on its internal technology team.

Working with Parallo, TSB modernised and optimised its Commvault data protection environment and established an ongoing managed service focused on monitoring, recoverability and continuous improvement. The result is greater confidence in the protection of critical data, fewer technology incidents within the environment managed by Parallo, and more time for TSB’s engineers to focus on higher-value work.

Building greater confidence in backup and recovery

TSB’s existing technology environment had served the bank well, but changing applications and workloads were creating new demands. The organisation wanted to improve the way it managed backup and recovery while ensuring its infrastructure could evolve alongside the business and support future cloud adoption.

TSB also recognised that technology alone wasn’t the answer. It wanted a specialist partner that could provide ongoing operational support as well as contribute expertise to its longer-term technology planning.

“We needed a partner who had a very flexible working arrangement where we could get the right software solutions in place, but also someone who would support us operationally and add value in road mapping our strategic thinking. Parallo was the best match for us.”

— Judge Gifkins, Technology Lead – Platforms, TSB

Modernising TSB’s data protection environment

With the Commvault Data Platform already in place, Parallo worked with TSB to optimise the platform around the bank’s requirements for scalability, backup and recovery.

The engagement began with workshops involving both teams to explore requirements, constraints and potential approaches. From there, Parallo developed the high-level design before moving into implementation, supported by detailed migration and testing plans to minimise risk to business operations.

A key objective was giving TSB greater visibility and confidence in its data protection. Rather than simply knowing backups had taken place, the bank wanted assurance that its protected assets could be successfully recovered when needed.

“We needed a proven solution that could backup all our data, but we also needed the support for that to be done without TSB effort, and the combination of Parallo and Commvault was a very convincing case. The reporting proves that. We now understand the percentage of assets which are backed up and can be restored successfully”, he says.

Taking operational pressure off the internal team

Following the upgrade, Parallo continued to manage and support TSB’s Commvault environment. The managed service provides ongoing monitoring, optimisation and reporting, including visibility into platform health and recoverability.

That ongoing support has reduced the amount of routine infrastructure management falling to TSB’s internal engineers. It has also contributed to a reduction in technology incidents within the areas of the environment managed by Parallo.

“We’ve seen a reduction in the amount of technology incidents we have in our operating environment, specific to the tech Parallo is responsible for, and we’ve also been able to descope our engineer responsibilities, so they’re not distracted by daily operational tasks, and can instead add value elsewhere”, he says.

For TSB, that means specialist expertise is taking care of the health and performance of the platform while its own technology team can direct more attention towards projects that contribute to the wider business.

An ongoing focus on resilience and improvement

The relationship has continued to evolve alongside TSB’s technology environment. Parallo provides ongoing virtual platform and data protection support, monitoring infrastructure health, backup recoverability and data security while identifying opportunities to improve the environment.

Regular reporting gives TSB visibility into the performance and recoverability of its protected assets, while Parallo’s remit has expanded over time to include areas such as licensing and hardware performance.

“On a daily basis, Parallo provides virtual platform support, taking care of the ‘food and water tasks’ for our virtual infrastructure. The other aspect is data protection support, ensuring our infrastructure is healthy, backups are recoverable and our data secure”, he says.

The relationship also gives TSB access to expertise as its wider technology strategy continues to evolve. What began as an engagement around data protection has developed into an ongoing partnership focused on keeping critical infrastructure resilient, recoverable and ready for what comes next.