One Data GmbH, a German software company specializing in applied artificial intelligence (AI), has grown rapidly with over 200 employees across Passau, Munich, Frankfurt, and Berlin. The company provides an AI-powered Data Product Builder that helps data teams unlock the full potential of their data.

The Challenge:

As One Data’s customer base expanded, there was increasing demand for a hosted version of their solution. Additionally, the company recognized an opportunity to improve productivity by offering better support to its solution engineers.

Julian Breiteneicher, tech lead of IT infrastructure at One Data, explains that their engineers spent a lot of time connecting to various unstructured and structured data sources to generate insights. By offering a well-defined base configuration for demos and Proof of Value deployments, the company aimed to help engineers start projects faster.

As One Data transitioned into a product-focused company, it needed a reliable solution to protect customer data in production environments and ensure data availability for essential collaboration tools like Microsoft 365. The company also wanted to maintain its competitive advantage by prioritizing speed over the competition.

Florian Schöpp, Head of Customer Success at One Data, emphasized that to maintain agility, the company needed to standardize on the best cloud-native tools that would support its growth.

One Data had adopted Kubernetes early on as a scalable and futureproof way to run its solutions. Initially, the company used Kubernetes for test and development workloads but added three separate backup tools for its six Kubernetes clusters. When the company decided to launch its hosted service on Kubernetes, finding a unified data protection solution became crucial.

“We chose to consolidate our clusters and standardize on SUSE Rancher,” says Breiteneicher. “Then we searched for a data protection solution that would integrate smoothly with Kubernetes and fully utilize its capabilities.”

The Solution:

To offer the same level of customer service while adding a hosted option, One Data selected Veeam’s Kasten K10 for Kubernetes environment protection. Kasten K10 also provided native support for immutable backups, a key feature for safeguarding customer data against cyberattacks.

“Security is a top priority for us,” says Schöpp. “With Kasten K10, we can easily protect our Kubernetes clusters and ensure that backups remain consistent and cannot be tampered with.”

One Data benefits from K10’s deep integration with the entire Kubernetes stack, allowing them to automate backup policies and integrate them into standard deployment workflows. “With K10, we no longer have to manually configure backup tasks. Automating this process has made our deployments more reliable,” explains Breiteneicher.

By using Kyverno, an open-source policy engine for Kubernetes integrated with Kasten K10, One Data can validate backup configurations and enforce security best practices. This integration provides advanced Infrastructure as Code capabilities, ensuring mission-critical data analytics workloads remain secure.

“Thanks to Kasten K10, we can now ensure consistent backups using snapshots,” says Breiteneicher. “This approach is both fast and efficient, allowing us to protect containers without downtime and store backups in a cloud-native, cost-efficient object store we fully control.”

In addition, One Data protects its central collaboration tools, such as Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive, using Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365. The company now backs up several terabytes of emails and files to Microsoft Azure, ensuring business continuity for over 200 users.

With a dependable data protection system in place, One Data can focus on expanding its business, capturing more market share, and driving productivity. The company has also strengthened its cyber-resilience, ensuring high service continuity.

The Result:

• Gaining new business: Kasten K10’s 100% reliable, enterprise-grade container backups helped One Data successfully launch its hosted service. “For our production workloads, we needed a stable and proven backup solution. Kasten K10 gave us exactly what we needed,” says Breiteneicher.
• Boosting productivity: Solution engineers can now move faster by reusing pre-configured demo setups. With a fine-grained permission model and intuitive self-service features, users can adjust backup policies and use saved restore points for their environments.
• Increasing protection against cyberattacks: One Data enhanced its security architecture with hardened Kubernetes clusters and backup coverage for collaboration data. “To improve our infrastructure security, we use a hardened Kubernetes setup. Unlike other backup solutions that require full privileges, K10 works well with restricted access, supporting security best practices and improving the cyber-resilience of our hosting operations,” explains Schöpp.