Client story Technology Provider to the Financial Services Industry Relies on Insight to Establish, Migrate to and Manage Two New Data Centers
By Insight Editor / 18 Jan 2018 / Topics: Cloud Data center Hybrid cloud
Facts at a glance
Client industry
Technology
Insight provided:
- Two state-of-the-art data centers
- NetApp® flash storage
- Cisco® UCS®, ACI network, firewalls and ISE
- Veritas™ NBU and appliances
- VMware
- F5 Networks
Insight services:
- Consulting services
- System design
- Managed services
- Residency
Outcomes:
Download the client story
- Greater speed and responsiveness
- Increased efficiency and productivity
- Extensive scalability
- Better customer experience
- Improved backup and disaster recovery capability
- Better security
- Staff freed to pursue higher-level business objectives
The client
The client is a leading U.S. company that helps financial institutions manage risk while increasing productivity and profits.
The challenge: Design nimble hybrid data centers and create a plan for “surgical” migration out of the parent company’s IT infrastructure
The client was utilizing its parent company’s data center. Faced with rapidly evolving customer expectations, that data center was not agile enough to meet its needs. When the parent company began to contemplate a data center relocation, the client decided to extract its workloads and set up its own data centers. As a stepping stone to a long-term (5+ years) goal of utilizing public cloud resources, they wanted to move to a private, hybrid cloud environment.
One of the hurdles the client faced was that its IT group was not up-to-speed on the latest infrastructure technologies. Consequently, education was a critical component of this interaction with Insight as was the identification and selection of colocation sites for their new data centers. Ultimately, what they were looking for was a complete turnkey solution to address computing, network, security, storage, backup, field services, managed services and data center migration.
The solution: Two cutting-edge data centers, data migration and ongoing management
The project — which touched on every competency area in the Insight services portfolio, from assessment and architecture to migration, security and managed services — started with consultants gaining an in-depth understanding of the client’s current challenges and its short-term and long-term goals. In the process, our team educated the client’s IT group about infrastructure technologies, from traditional systems to converged and hyperconverged solutions. They also explained how Insight could help manage and support the new infrastructure, and augment the client’s IT resources through residency.
Because the client’s workloads were being extracted from the parent company’s data center, our methodology for producing a detailed and precise application dependency map was critical to the success of the project. Using accurate information on the relationship between workloads and infrastructure, Insight and the client could orchestrate the surgical removal and migration of applications without causing any downtime or security concerns.
Two new data centers were built out at colocation facilities with the latest systems from NetApp, Cisco, Veritas, VMware and F5 Networks. They provide the full technology stack from compute, storage, and virtualization to compliance, data protection, and disaster recovery — all of which will be managed by us.
The benefits: Increased capacity, agility, scalability, and security, and better internal and external customer experiences
With flash storage providing greater speed and responsiveness, the client’s internal users will experience increased efficiency and productivity, while its customers will enjoy an enhanced user experience. The new data centers also have the ability to scale as the business grows, so the client’s IT group won’t be faced with another data migration anytime soon.
The advanced data protection and backup solutions are easy to manage, which will free IT resources to address higher-level business objectives. And the fact that those systems are in place will provide IT and company executives with welcome peace of mind.
