In retail, systems are always under pressure. Stock, payments, and customer transactions all move in parallel, leaving little room for delays or failures. For The Foschini Group (TFG), one of South Africa’s largest retail groups, that reality has only intensified as data volumes and digital complexity continue to grow.
With a portfolio of 39 lifestyle and apparel brands, more than 4,700 outlets across five continents, and over 47,000 employees, TFG operates at a scale where even minor disruptions can ripple quickly across operations.
At the same time, the company’s data estate has been expanding rapidly, growing by as much as 40% each year. As TFG moved towards a hybrid cloud and containerised architecture to support agility and omnichannel retail, the pressure on its data protection environment began to show.
Backup processes, originally designed for more traditional infrastructure, were starting to overrun and threaten production systems. In a retail environment where stock management, point-of-sale systems, and customer transactions must remain continuously available, any interference with live systems becomes a business issue, not just an IT concern.
“Embracing containers and a hybrid cloud platform helped us improve our ability to respond to changing demands, but we still needed to update our data protection capabilities to avoid interruptions to our operations,” said Edward Woolls, Head of Infrastructure Operations at TFG Infotec.
The shift to modern infrastructure also introduced new complexity. TFG’s environment now spans approximately 300TB of production data, alongside a Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes platform comprising 120 namespaces and five clusters, supporting critical integration services across retail and financial systems. Protecting that environment required a data resilience approach built for hybrid cloud, containerised workloads, and growing cyber risk.
TFG selected the Veeam Data Platform, alongside Veeam Kasten for Kubernetes, to modernise its data protection strategy and align it with its evolving infrastructure.
“It is hard to talk about Veeam without sounding like a Veeam salesperson, but it really does deliver on multiple fronts,” said Woolls. “Most important to us was that our analysis showed that Veeam connects best with the latest technologies. The feature set included must-haves for us, such as encryption, immutability, and storage compression. In our view, it was the best solution to come with us on our hybrid cloud transformation.”
The impact was immediate and measurable.
Backup times were reduced by up to 70%, eliminating the risk of backup jobs interfering with live production systems. Storage efficiency improved significantly, with deduplication and compression delivering around 40% savings in backup storage.
Most critically, TFG achieved up to 80% faster recovery of key systems, strengthening its ability to maintain business continuity under pressure.
“Straight away, Veeam slashed backup times by as much as 70%, removing any impact on our production systems. So, a 14TB database that used to take five hours to back up now takes just 20 minutes. And crucially, we can now recover critical systems up to 80% faster. By helping to ensure that TFG can operate without interruption, Veeam is contributing to our competitive edge,” said Woolls.
Beyond performance gains, the shift reflects a broader change in how retailers are approaching data.
Data is no longer just a reporting asset. It underpins customer experience, pricing, inventory visibility, and transaction integrity across channels. When systems fail, the impact is immediate and visible to customers.
“With the threat of cyber-attack growing, safeguarding our data has never been more important,” Woolls added.
Tim Pfaelzer, GM and SVP for EMEA at Veeam said the TFG deployment reflects a wider shift in South African enterprise environments.
“TFG is operating in a highly dynamic, always-on retail environment where data volumes are growing rapidly, and infrastructure is becoming increasingly distributed. By strengthening its data resilience strategy, TFG has ensured it can recover critical systems faster, maintain operational continuity, and reduce risk across its hybrid and cloud-native platforms. This approach gives the business the confidence to scale, innovate, and keep stores, transactions and customer experiences running without disruption.”
For TFG, the work is not finished. The next phase includes expanding into advanced capabilities such as ransomware scanning and recovery orchestration, as the company continues to strengthen its resilience posture.
“There are so many powerful automation features built into our Veeam solutions that we have yet to implement. That is the next chapter in our Veeam journey, and we are excited to find out what we will achieve together next,” said Woolls.
In a retail environment defined by constant demand and zero tolerance for disruption, the ability to recover quickly has become a basic business requirement. And increasingly, it is where competitive advantage is decided.
For more information on Veeam, visit https://www.veeam.com/.
