Global Manufacturing Firm Kadant Enhances Cyber Resilience by Ensuring Backup and Recovery of Microsoft 365, Azure Entra ID and Salesforce Data with AvePoint

Success Highlights

Gained better visibility and control of 115TB of data across Microsoft 365 and Salesforce through Cloud Backup’s audit trail and change log features

Cost savings of $40,000 for successfully migrating data from five newly acquired companies to one Microsoft 365 tenant

Fast and easy granular restores of individual files and entire directories

Safeguard against loss of data in Microsoft 365 and Salesforce due to accidental deletion

Customer Location Westford, Massachusetts, USA

Industry Manufacturing

Platform Microsoft 365,Salesforce

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Kadant, a global supplier of technologies and engineered systems that drive Sustainable Industrial Processing, has been serving industrial customers for over 100 years. The company's products and services play an integral role in enhancing efficiency, optimizing energy utilization, and maximizing productivity in process industries. Kadant helps customers advance their sustainability initiatives with products that reduce waste or generate more yield with fewer inputs, particularly fiber, energy, and water.

Critical Needs

Comprehensive backup and restore solution for Salesforce, Microsoft 365 and Azure Entra ID
Fast and easy recovery of Salesforce data in case of accidental deletion
Compliance with data security regulations and audit requirements
Streamlined migration of data from newly acquired companies to one Microsoft 365 tenant

The Challenge

With a rapidly growing workforce of 3,500 Microsoft 365 users and 800 Salesforce users, Kadant needed to transition from on-premises file sharing to SharePoint. In 2024, they also acquired five companies, necessitating migration into their Microsoft 365 tenant for secure collaboration.

At the same time, Kadant was looking for a data recovery tool to manage their own backups because Microsoft’s recycle bin only offers a 90-day retention period and did not meet their needs for swift restoration of individual files and entire directory structures. Similarly, for their Salesforce team, Kadant wanted a backup solution in the event of accidental deletion because they learned the hard way: An accidental deletion of a parent record in Salesforce caused several business reports to be removed from the system. To remedy the situation, they had to manually recover the data, which was an excruciating process.

These needs led them to seek a comprehensive backup and restore solution for robust data protection, quick restoration, and compliance across their Microsoft and Salesforce investments.

When we learned that AvePoint could manage both Microsoft 365 and Salesforce data, and migrate data from various sources into one tenant, we were excited to work with just one company that could address all our data needs.

Edward Francoeur
Director of Global Platforms and Services, Kadant

The AvePoint Solution

After scrutinizing the solutions offered by five other vendors, Kadant found AvePoint Cloud Backup and AvePoint Fly could suit all of their needs best. AvePoint Cloud Backup provides Kadant with data retention and recovery capabilities for their data across Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and Azure Entra ID for critical data and as a safeguard for loss of data in Salesforce and Microsoft 365 due to accidental deletion.

AvePoint Cloud Backup’s granular recovery feature addresses Kadant’s recovery needs by allowing them to restore specific items on-demand, enabling them to recover individual documents and versions, and entire directory structures. This feature also allows restoration of content and conversations to different locations, not just to their original platform.

Another important AvePoint Cloud Backup functionality for Kadant is its audit trail feature, which retains records of all actions that had been performed. This is crucial for preserving record integrity and is retained for as long as the record is held.

According to Shaun Beecroft, Kadant’s IT Security Manager for the Americas, “The search function is fast and easy to use. Recovery speed was a critical need for one of our subsidiaries so we were happy Cloud Backup could do that without sacrificing the integrity and granularity we needed.”

With 115TB of data across Microsoft 365 and Salesforce, Kadant needed better visibility and control for audit and compliance. AvePoint Cloud Backup allows Kadant to monitor data changes and provide a detailed change log. According to Shaun, “Our security team is dispersed globally, so the change log is really useful with Entra ID as well because we’re always on the lookout for unauthorized changes.”

AvePoint also simplified the migration process for Kadant. Benjamin Larson, Kadant’s Global Network and System Administrator, says, “AvePoint Fly is a tool that we've been using a lot especially for our new company acquisitions. If they have a Microsoft 365 tenant, we just grab their data, start backing it up, and the tool makes it a lot easier to move things from A to B.”

Overall, the solutions were deployed quickly and smoothly. According to Edward, "It's been a good journey with AvePoint. Often when we purchase tools, implementation is a real risk area. If you don't do it right, you must spend a lot of effort doing it a second time, but with AvePoint, we just turned it on and let it run." Benjamin says, “Once everything was set up, the solutions have been working seamlessly and are very intuitive.”

The Road Ahead

When asked what advice they could give organizations that are facing similar data challenges, Edward said, “The only regret I have is that we didn't invest in AvePoint sooner. The improvements have truly been a selling point internally when we talk to the businesses about moving away from their on-premises file share to SharePoint. Now, we can confidently assure them that we have all the data properly backed up and we can restore it on-demand.” Ultimately, these tools provide the Kadant IT team peace of mind knowing they’ve ensured business continuity and compliance for their businesses to thrive.

Notably, because of AvePoint Fly’s capabilities, Edward states that, “Initially, we reserved $40,000 to get an external partner to help us with data migration. Now we've been doing our M&A migrations in-house, as there’s no need for an external consultant which saved us the consultancy fee.”

As a final note, Benjamin shares this piece of advice: “It’s important to dispose of junk data before doing migration, and to clean up your data before you back it up so you only keep what’s useful.”