UK Firm Modernizes IT Infrastructure and Improves Data Protection with SimpliVity
---nyse--hpe_1.jpg "Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Logo")
Company Size
11-200
Region
- Europe
Country
- United Kingdom
Product
- SimpliVity OmniCube CN-2200
Tech Stack
- VMware vCenter vSphere
- Proclaim case management software
- Progress database software
- MS Windows 2012 file/print services
- MS Exchange 2013
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Digital Expertise
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Professional Service
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Infrastructure Inspection
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Lawlords is a leading full-service firm of costs lawyers, law costs draftsmen and costs consultants based in the United Kingdom. The firm has offices in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Carlisle. Lawlords provides a range of services to its clients, including cost budgeting, cost management, cost negotiation, and more. The firm prides itself on its commitment to delivering high-quality services and achieving the best possible outcomes for its clients. However, Lawlords was facing challenges with its aging IT infrastructure. The firm relied on a mix of non-redundant legacy HP and Dell servers with internal storage. This outdated infrastructure was becoming increasingly risky and costly to maintain. Equipment failures or catastrophes had the potential to impair critical IT services and disrupt business. Furthermore, Lawlords was constrained by inefficient tape-based backup procedures. Applications and data were backed up daily, after business hours. Manual restorations from tape took hours, and any changes that occurred since the last nightly backup were simply lost.
The Challenge
Lawlords, a UK-based full-service firm of costs lawyers, law costs draftsmen and costs consultants, was facing challenges with its aging IT infrastructure. The firm relied on a mix of non-redundant legacy HP and Dell servers with internal storage. This outdated infrastructure was becoming increasingly risky and costly to maintain. Equipment failures or catastrophes had the potential to impair critical IT services and disrupt business. Furthermore, Lawlords was constrained by inefficient tape-based backup procedures. Applications and data were backed up daily, after business hours. Manual restorations from tape took hours, and any changes that occurred since the last nightly backup were simply lost. Stuart Taylor, IT Manager for Lawlords, initiated a data center modernization program to improve the reliability and agility of the firm’s IT infrastructure.
The Solution
After evaluating a number of potential options including solutions from HP, NetApp and EMC, Taylor selected SimpliVity OmniCube hyperconverged infrastructure as the foundation for the company’s next-generation data center. SimpliVity OmniCube provides a scalable, modular, 2U building block of x86 resources that offers all the functionality of traditional IT infrastructure—in one device, with a unified administrative interface. The solution eliminates cost and complexity by assimilating a variety of IT functions including the hypervisor, compute, storage, network switching, replication, backup, WAN optimization and real-time data deduplication. The solution delivers the best of both worlds: x86 cloud economics and enterprise capabilities including data efficiency, performance, data protection and global unified management. Lawlords implemented a geographically distributed OmniCube configuration for ultimate data protection and resiliency. The firm replaced four HP tower servers with two 2U SimpliVity OmniCube CN-2200 nodes in its primary data center in Manchester. The redundant configuration ensures continuous availability in the event of hardware failures. The firm also deployed an OmniCube CN-2200 in their Carlisle office for disaster recovery.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
UBM plc: Taking the pulse of the business and engaging employees with a far-reaching strategic transformation
UBM, a leading global events business, was undergoing a significant strategic transformation named 'Events First'. As part of this transformation, the company was preparing to complete the largest acquisition in its history - Advanstar, a US-based events and marketing services business valued at more than USD970m. The company faced the risk of human capital flight if it was unable to effectively engage top talent with the new strategic direction. UBM needed to make significant structural, process and systems changes, uniting its previously autonomous regional businesses. The challenge was to ensure all of its employees were engaged and aligned with the new future vision.
Case Study
Wittmann EDV-Systeme launches IT monitoring services
Small and medium-sized businesses often lack the know-how and resources required for thorough IT system monitoring. Wittmann EDV-Systeme wanted to launch a solution to plug the gap – enabling it to improve its own competitiveness and that of its customers. IT landscapes are becoming ever more complex and outsourcing is gaining popularity, IT systems must nonetheless remain easy-to-use and extremely reliable at all times. Automated, round-the-clock system monitoring therefore represents an immensely valuable proposition for companies: downtime for business-critical applications can be avoided, and IT systems remain available at all times.
Case Study
Uncovering behavioral insight to help reward and retain the best employees
The HR services company, an IBM client, was facing the challenge of understanding the factors underlying personal employment choices. They wanted to offer their clients unprecedented insight into what motivates employees and prospective job candidates. However, their existing systems were not capable of handling the surging data volumes collected from a wide range of different data sources. With the total volume likely to keep on growing, the firm looked for a solution that could meet current needs and scale to meet tomorrow’s demands.
Case Study
Infosys achieves a 5–7 percent effort reduction across projects
Infosys, a global leader in consulting, technology, and outsourcing solutions, was facing significant challenges in application development and maintenance due to its distributed teams, changing business priorities and the need to stay in alignment with customer needs. The company used a mix of open source, home-grown and third-party applications to support application development projects. However, challenges resulting from distributed teams using manual processes increased as the company grew. It became more and more important for Infosys to execute its projects efficiently, so they could improve quality, reduce defects and minimize delays.
Case Study
Flex Contact Center: Supporting rapid business growth with IBM Connections Cloud and IBM Verse
Flex Contact Center, a professional services company offering telesales, call-center, anti-attrition, back-office, helpdesk and collection services, has grown rapidly since its establishment in 2009. With operations in 12 sites across two states and four cities in Brazil, the company employs more than 11,000 people. However, the company realized that to prevent barriers to future expansion, it was essential to make it as easy as possible for its people to work together effectively—even if they were based in separate geographical locations. Traditional approaches to collaboration—based on email and phone calls—threatened to reduce productivity. Flex Contact Center wanted to enable better collaboration and communication across its workforce, but did not want to make large investments in infrastructure.
Case Study
PureFluent: Connecting to partners and customers through the cloud for enhanced productivity
PureFluent, a translation services company, was facing challenges in managing its translation and document review processes. The company often received files in uneditable formats from customers, which required staff members to transfer text to word processing or spreadsheet documents. During the translation process, maintaining version control was a challenge because PureFluent sent work to hundreds of translators in multiple geographic locations. It was also time-consuming for staff to manage the large volume of emails and FTP transactions required to submit translations for customer review and ensure the integration of requested changes. Furthermore, staff were spending significant time hunting through their emails for specific attachments.
