Overheidsdatacenter Noord (ODC-Noord) is one of four government data centers in the Netherlands, providing data center and cloud services to the central government. With a team of over 90 professionals, ODC-Noord works on various services for various ministries, including Housing-as-a-Service (HaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). To further unburden ministries, ODC-North is continuously expanding its service offerings. In collaboration with Databalance and PQR, Backup as a Service (BaaS) was developed and added as a service.
Customer perspective
Turnkey backup service
“We are a kind of Internet service provider (ISP) for the government. We provide services to eight ministries, which in turn serve more than 30 different organizations. All of these customers purchase services independently and completely separately. Our customers vary widely in technical expertise. Some customers operate completely independently, while others need a turnkey backup service. Backup solutions are often expensive, complex and error-prone. Our IaaS customers could already use our S3 object storage, but many preferred a fully managed backup service. That’s why the demand came for a total solution, including management and maintenance.”
Partner with specific knowledge and expertise
“Our IT infrastructure is based on OpenStack, which makes the integration of a backup solution challenging. Not only because of the technical requirements, but also because of the specific expertise required to successfully implement such a solution. We were looking for a partner who could take on both implementation and management for several years. In addition, this party had to be flexible and think along with us about possible challenges. After all, you never know in advance exactly what obstacles you will encounter in practice. That’s why we put a lot of emphasis in the tender on the partners’ technical knowledge and expertise.”
The first ministries are now running live on the Backup as a Service solution. Other government organizations have also shown interest. “We are deliberately keeping the brakes on for now,” says Peter Annema. “After implementation, there are always some optimizations to be made. We want to resolve all the loose ends first, before we onboard new customers. However, demand is high. Ministries regularly discuss the services they purchase in customer councils. Interest in our backup solution is high, as many customers prefer to outsource it due to the complexity and time-consuming nature of backup & restore.”
Collaboration for the future
