Replacing Tape Backups with AWS Cloud Storage and Cutting Costs by 40%

Founded in 1977, Ellaktor Group had accumulated more than 70 TB of data across four decades of operation across concessions, environment, renewable energy, and real estate. All of it was being backed up to physical tape drives — a two-stage process that first moved data to an intermediate server, then on to tapes, which were then transferred weekly to an offsite location for business continuity compliance.

The system worked, but it was expensive and cumbersome. The cost of tapes, tape drives, staff administration, maintenance, offsite transfer logistics, and third-party storage contractors all added up. Worse, some equipment was approaching end of life, meaning the company faced a significant hardware refresh bill with no performance improvement in return.

"It was just about operational effectiveness," said Evangelos Pelecanos, Group CIO at Ellaktor. "We wanted to increase productivity and also get rid of some costs — buying new tapes, transferring tapes offsite, and the costs of the contractor that handled the transfer and storage."

LCM Go Cloud had already been in contact with Ellaktor regarding a broader cloud migration. When the timing for that wasn't right, the conversation turned to backup — and LCM Go Cloud demonstrated that AWS was the only option that offered everything Ellaktor needed, even though Ellaktor was already using a different cloud provider for other parts of its business.

LCM Go Cloud built a proof of concept showing exactly how the transfer would work. After it validated seamlessly, the full migration was authorised. The entire project — from planning in January 2023 to completion in May 2023 — took just 5 months. Data now flows through AWS Storage Gateway directly into Amazon S3 Glacier storage tiers, replacing the tape library entirely. Critically, the new system uses an interface identical to the previous one — no retraining, no risk, no disruption for the ~4,000 employees who rely on it.

"The first factor was our dedication — we really wanted to do this. Second was LCM Go Cloud. And the third was the maturity of the solution — it was very easily integrated into our system." — Evangelos Pelecanos, Group CIO, Ellaktor Group.