Scalability, data management and protection, these were some of the focuses addressed at the new Better Together event, organized by power2Cloud with Google Cloud and HYCU, Tuesday evening at the MAVV (Museum of the Art of Vine and Wine), at the Palace of Portici.

A select few companies were invited to engage with the power2Cloud team and the two technology partners on Backup and Disaster Recovery As a Service on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). 

Reporting from Dublin was Giacomo Perini, Territory Manager Google Cloud, while from Belgrade, Biljana Rancic, Account Executive Italy HYCU, was not absent. In the room, Felice Giusti, co-founder and CTO of R-Store, talked about the use of both solutions in his company.

With the work completed, Maria Paola Sorrentino, the third generation of a family of winemakers at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, led a tasting of wines from Cantine Sorrentino. 

Guests were treated to a journey of discovery of three labels, Caprettone, Dòrè, and Vigna Lapillo, which stimulated all the senses, from mineral and fruity scents to tastings of some local delicacies from the Dispensa del Re - an organized network for small producers in Campania - and the truly special desserts of Mon Sciù.

"Optimize Resources, Protect Your Data with Back up and Disaster Recovery As a Service"

"Today digitization is a goal, not a choice," Paola Canozo, Sales Manager power2Cloud, was tasked with opening the panel discussion.

As a digital partner of companies in every industry and vertical in Italy, power2Cloud over the years has pursued a software selection enhancing SaaS solutions, security, omnichannel and tailor-made projects.

Better together is a philosophy that fits with our cloud ecosystem and the way we operate, which we have fostered from our first partnership with Google Cloud, to our most recent partnership with HYCU, a BaaS and DraaS solution.

Business needs of course differ but it is important to rely on reliable and scalable solutions, promote training and integrations, native or tailored, not forgetting compliance and data security. 

A partner who already has vertical expertise, such as power2Cloud, is the key to change, to optimize investments and resources, recommend solutions and meet strict security criteria, because data and careful analysis can determine business strategy and optimize all flows."

"Data management and security, open cloud, collaboration and sustainability: Google's 5 challenges"

What are the focuses of digital transformation? The floor was given to Giacomo Perini, Territory Manager Google Cloud, who shared an image of the Palace of Portici at the opening, recalling the five challenges Google is responding to for the success of every organization.

"How can we imagine combining art with digital? Thanks to the Google Arts & Culture platform, we can also show the beauty of Naples. Google," he reminded, "did not start out as a cloud provider, but has gained experience offered through data analytics and artificial intelligence, which it has made available to people and companies with more than ten applications of one billion users each. 

Thus, it starts with the value provided by data, but also the choice of infrastructure to keep up with the market and customer needs. 

Google's road map is different, we have made the cloud open, providing for on premise, cloud and multicloud environments, to avoid lock-in we are also thinking about opportunities such as those offered by Kubernetes or TensorFlow, which have revolutionized the way we do applications, but also artificial intelligence."

Another aspect promoted by the Mountain View giant is collaboration, which with the Google Workspace suite allows the entire team to improve their work.

Not forgetting another strategic aspect, data security. How can I protect corporate data? 

"Google boasts the world's most extensive wired network, with data centers across the planet and undersea cables offering data sovereignty all the way to the service provider's cabin that each organization uses.

In addition, this year we inaugurated two data centers in Italy, one in Milan (SAP and SURPRise certified, so open to public administration, PNRR European funds and those to come) and one in Turin, which will be ready in the first half of 2023.

In addition to data security," Giacomo concluded, "the constant goal for Google is to reduce consumption and unused resources, therefore, we are pursuing a plan not only for sustainability, but for zero impact by 2030.

"With HYCU protected backups, thanks to a solution for multi-cloud environments."

Biljana Rancic, HYCU Italy Account Executive, introduced the platform that deals with protection, data migration and disaster recovery.

"HYCU is an American company headquartered in Boston and has more than 300 employees worldwide. 

We work on multi-cloud environments and have native integration with on-prem, public cloud and software as a service applications. Our goal is to help our customers with secure backups through on-prem and cloud services!

Currently," he recalled, "more than 3,200 companies have relied on our technologies, enjoying important benefits: saving time to devote to value-adding activities, protection against ransomware, cost optimization, protection of business-critical cloud resources and speed of recovery.

At the end of her talk, Biljana announced a special offer (valid until the end of September), which provides power2Cloud customers with a free 1TB GCP backup for life (to take advantage of this promotion simply register at this link).

Backup and disaster recovery on GCP with HYCU, two simple scenarios

To deepen these focuses, Massimo Zito, CTO power2Cloud, brought testimony from two practical cases, recounting the use of HYCU on Google Cloud Platform.

"Let's start with the HYCU services used to implement these two practice cases: HYCU for Enterprise Cloud and HYCU for Public Cloud. 

The first is a module that installs in the On-Prem data center, which allows backup by finalizing it on Google Cloud Storage, while the second allows backup of an infrastructure that is already on GCP, using GCP storage.

On top of these there is a component that interfaces with both the Enterprise Cloud and Public Cloud parts: HYCU Protégé, with which you can do a restore of a Virtual Machine (VM) for which there is a backup on Cloud Storage, as a VM in the GCP context. So a lift and shift restore of an on-prem VM to a VM in GCP."

The R-Store scenario 

Massimo then introduced the first practical scenario of using HYCU for R-Store, which needed to activate this solution to protect data and have protected backups.

"To get the HYCU service up and running, the first thing R-Store did was simply to subscribe to the service through GCP's MarketPlace. This allows with a few simple steps to configure everything needed to create backups of all the VMs that are in service at that time. 

Once the installation phase is over and a few backup cycles have been completed, it is possible to restore the entire VM image or even just a few files that may have been damaged or deleted by accident.

The whole environment will be ransomware-proof, what HYCU uses on GCP is of exclusive use to the backup platform. This means that if there were to be the presence of any kind of malware resulting in an attack on VMs or any component under the control of Google Cloud, it would not affect the operation of HYCU.

In addition, HYCU automatically chooses the backup class best suited to preserve the type of data in the enterprise, taking into account price as well.

Another advantage is to quickly retrieve information without complexity-if the cloud zone where numerous VMs have been installed becomes unavailable, for example, it only takes a few simple clicks to schedule a restore to another zone and resume your activities quickly."

The scenario of LiuJo MAN

Another scenario was LiuJo MAN.

"In this case," continued Massimo Zito, "the goal was to restore on GCP a specific VM in the event of a disaster and thus unavailability of the on premise service.

The first thing to do is to deploy the VM dedicated to HYCU in the customer's Enterprise Cloud and configure it to back up first locally to NAS or SAN and then move it to Cloud Storage (Google Cloud Platform).

Once the backup is finalized and transferred to GCP, it is necessary to subscribe to the service through the MarketPlace.

Subscribing to the service, allows an HYCU controller to be instantiated in the customer's GCP project that will be dedicated to VM recovery operations should a disruption occur.

Then, once the incident in the customer's Enterprise Cloud is resolved, the instance running on GCP can be backed up to run on premise again.

At this point all those resources, which clearly have a cost, used for these operations can be divested. Thus, the expense, in terms of GCP resources, for disaster recovery is limited only to the period of time it takes to resolve the problem.

The advantages of this type of scenario are basically two: the TCO ( Total Cost of Ownership ) is definitely optimal, as the only resources needed within the customer's infrastructure are computational computation and disk space, and also the cost to put this solution into operation is close to zero, as deployment is simple, training is immediate (it involves using a very simple web interface ) and upgrades are done with a single click."

"The importance of data and technology: R-Store recounts the use of GCP and HYCU"

Also significant was the testimony of Felice Giusti, R-Store Co-founder and CTO, who recounted the journey of growth andadoption of digital tools, particularly with GCP and HYCU.

R-Store is one of Italy's leading Apple distributors, a company that started twelve years ago in Naples but has grown rapidly throughout the country. In addition to retail, it provides consulting, service and training, offering customers the best customer experience.

"Technology and a partner like power2Cloud have accompanied R-Store's growth, the choice so far has proven to be a winning one!

The shift from on-premise virtual machines to the cloud," he invited reflection, " I believe it is an unstoppable process; Google services offer reliability, flexibility and innovation, and bring even entities that do not have a particularly structured IT department or expertise closer together.

In the midst of a pandemic and closed stores, R-Store experienced a sudden 150 percent growth that could not have been managed without an infrastructure like Google Cloud Platform. 

"A partner such as power2Cloud is strategic in supporting business objectives as the opportunities for a cloud provider such as Google are many."

R-Store then moved from using a server, to on-premise virtualization to Google's cloud, which provides it with scalability for its business.

With the Google Cloud Platform, the adoption of a service such as HYCU has enabled R-Store to configure everything in one environment so that disaster recovery is always possible for all their services.

"We are now moving away from virtual machines and starting to use microservices. In the future? The goal is to rely on machine learning for data analysis."