Company
Kinepolis Group is a Belgium based cinema chain with 50 cinemas located across Europe (Belgium, France, Spain, Luxemburg, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Poland) and 44 cinemas in Canada.
Business Need
Needed a high-performance storage and server solution that was easy to deploy and centrally manage dozens of remote cinemas.
Solution
- Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS
- Prism management infrastructure
Benefits
- Reduced system management time by 5x
- Shortened upgrades from multiple hours to minutes
- Eliminated the need to hire IT specialists at all remote sites
- Freed up IT to work on more strategic projects
CHALLENGES
“Our biggest challenge as a cinema company is staying ahead of the competition,” stated Bjorn Van Reet, CIO of Kinepolis Group. “In order to maintain our status as an industry leader, we must continually adopt new innovations that improve the end-user experience. One of the ways we can accomplish that goal is to ensure that we always use the best IT technologies on the market.”
Kinepolis Group currently offers the ‘ultimate movie experience’ to almost 24 million visitors each year in Europe. “We have the best surround systems, the biggest screens, the best chairs, and the most advanced projectors in the business,” Van Reet added. “We love to say that we’re living for today—but we also need to be prepared for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, meaning that we need to reduce the costs and complexity of our IT environment as much as possible, in order to free up administrative time and capital to invest in new technologies and projects.”
SOLUTION
Kinepolis deployed two Nutanix clusters at its main datacenter in Belgium for all corporate ERP system, financial applications, Active Directory, and file and print servers; and additional Nutanix clusters at 22 of its remote theater sites in Europe. The cinemas are now using the Nutanix systems for all local ticketing applications, food and beverage services, security, and heating control systems.
RESULTS
Ease of Management and Better Performance
“Everything runs a lot smoother and faster on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software. All of our management and patching processes can now be done with just one click. Firmware upgrades that used to take multiple hours on the previous infrastructure finish 5 times faster on the Nutanix systems. By moving to Nutanix, we have seen an almost 500% reduction in IT management time, enabling our IT team to focus on more strategic projects that move the business forward and improve the customer experience.”
One OS, One Click
“Nutanix was the perfect choice for Kinepolis since they don’t have technical admins on board at each remote site,” added Bart Van Praet, account manager at Neoria, one of Nutanix’s European technology partners. “The ‘One OS, One Click’ functionality from Nutanix means that new solutions can be deployed very quickly with the same consistent experience across all sites. All of Kinepolis’ essential applications and services are now hosted on Nutanix. Why did we recommend Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software to Kinepolis? Because it’s simply the best hyperconverged software solution on the market.”
Increased Visibility with Prism
Kinepolis is using Nutanix Prism to obtain a centralized view of all applications and operations. “Prism has given us excellent insight into how our systems are performing and enables us to accurately plan for the future. In the past, storage and server management was very time-consuming and complex since we had to log into each separate system individually. Having just one dashboard for our entire environment makes IT management a breeze.”
NEXT STEPS
“The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software enabled us to create an environment that is very easy to manage, really fast to set up, and doesn’t require a lot of operational tasks afterwards. We are now in the process of placing an additional Nutanix cluster in production for our SQL workloads, and are evaluating the use of AHV, the Nutanix hypervisor, for all of our virtual workloads. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud solution has exceeded all of our expectations for management simplicity as well as performance. I predict that Nutanix will play a key role in the future of our IT environment going forward,” concluded Van Reet.
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software has enabled us to create an environment that is very easy to manage, really fast to set up, and doesn’t require a lot of operational tasks afterwards. I predict that Nutanix will play a key role in the future of our IT environment going forward.
Bjorn Van Reet, CIO, Kinepolis Group