Company
Reed Exhibitions is the world’s leading events organizer, with a growing portfolio of over 500 events in over 30 countries and a staff of 3,900 exhibition specialists.
Industry
Events and Exhibitions
Business Need
Needed new infrastructure to support Singapore business expansion and enable secure data backup.
Solution
- Nutanix Enterprise Cloud on Dell XC430 systems
- Acropolis Software, including AHV virtualization
- Prism management infrastructure
- Enterprise Applications: SAP, Microsoft SQL Server
Benefits
- Completed smooth and nondisruptive migration within a week during normal business hours
- Simplified management of entire infrastructure using the Prism interface
- Obtained over 30% improvement in performance using SSD-based storage
- Achieved 30% cost reduction and overall increased efficiency
CHALLENGES
Reed Exhibitions needed new storage and server infrastructure that would enable them to meet the digital transformation requirements of its growing business. “We wanted to expand our existing infrastructure in Singapore,” said John Moses, Senior Regional IT Infrastructure Manager at Reed Exhibitions. “Our requirement was to find a simple and reliable system that would allow for easy infrastructure management and scalability, while addressing our business needs across different departments.”
Setting up a solid infrastructure and back-up environment was vital to ensure the availability and protection of data. Reed’s legacy IT infrastructure consisted of 20 to 25 different servers – with SAP, Microsoft SQL Server, LANDESK, and various accounting workloads. With the upcoming expansion into Singapore, the IT team wanted to avoid the possibility of extra maintenance costs and system lags. “Our operations are expanding at a fast pace and we were in search of a solution that would best address our problems,” noted Moses. “We also needed to make sure that as we migrated from our current physical systems, the ongoing process would not affect the current workloads that we have to run on a daily basis.”
SOLUTION
Reed needed a solution that would easily fit into its existing IT environment, while providing new capabilities for scaling and flexibility. “We were considering several different solution options until we came across Nutanix at an industry conference in Singapore. We invited them to provide a system demo of their hyperconverged platform and we were convinced. It was the least complicated, most scalable solution compared to the other vendors we were considering,” added Moses.
Through a local reseller and integrator, IIJ Global Solutions Singapore Pte. Ltd., Reed purchased the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software, which was deployed in October 2016. By moving to Nutanix, Reed was able to run its multiple, business-critical enterprise applications on a single platform, including migrating from its legacy Dell servers and EqualLogic storage systems with VMware ESXi onto the Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure-based solution.
It should be noted that the migration to Nutanix took place during office hours over five business days, with no interruption to users. “We expected that the migration from physical to virtual servers would be time-consuming and would require supervision from our IT team, but it didn’t,” Moses reported. “We were impressed with the efficiency and ease of the deployment. The migration went smoothly and we were able to monitor it all via a dashboard report. It took us about a week to complete, with no overtime required. The migration would have likely taken several weekends longer with other vendors.”
RESULTS
The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud implementation resulted in a host of benefits for Reed. With the compact nature of the Nutanix solution, the IT environment was easier to manage and resulted in significant power savings compared to the legacy approach. The IIJ Group and Nutanix teams worked closely with Reed during the migration, providing technical support both onsite and virtually. In addition, Nutanix’s scalability and flexibility eliminated the need for multiple complex point solutions by providing a fully integrated enterprise cloud platform that could address Reed’s physical and virtual workload requirements.
Since the migration to Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software, Reed has obtained 20-30% savings in operations and a 30% improvement in application performance. Looking at the longer-term benefits, Nutanix Enterprise Cloud was the best option for the deployment, partly due to the low maintenance cost of the IT infrastructure. Compared to the previous environment that required multiple dedicated administrators for support, the environment can now be managed by one IT specialist. Ongoing maintenance and workload tracking are easy as the Prism dashboard provides visibility on day-to-day operations, and it is also able to flag issues and create alerts before a problem happens.
With the numerous events that Reed organizes across various regions and the company’s continued growth, it is crucial that their IT systems are able to support fluctuating workloads. Nutanix is delivering the performance and availability needed to meet this demand, while also providing powerful incremental scalability for future requirements. “We implemented Nutanix in our Singapore operations first, and now we are now in discussions to expand the solution to our other markets. Nutanix has really proven its value when it comes to improving our workflow and overall efficiency,” Moses concluded.
We invited Nutanix to provide a system demo of their hyperconverged platform and we were convinced. It was the least complicated, most scalable solution compared to the other vendors we were considering.
John Moses, Senior Regional IT Infrastructure Manager, Reed Exhibitions