Leading U.S. Terminal Operator Improves Agility and Dependability by Consolidating Siloed Systems
COMPANY
Ports America is the largest U.S. terminal operator and stevedore, with operations in every major port in the nation.
INDUSTRY
Shipping
BUSINESS NEEDS
Ensure availability for dispersed operations and provide new capabilities to adapt to changing business needs and achieve digital transformation goals.
SOLUTION
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS
BENEFITS
Improved agility by consolidating multiple systems on an enterprise cloud built with hyperconverged infrastructure.Minimized downtime and kept critical supply chain operations running smoothly for maximum revenue.Ready to easily scale for new automation and digital transformation initiatives on the horizon.
CHALLENGE
Global shipping has witnessed many waves of evolution over hundreds of years. Digitization may be the most dramatic.
“We’re in one of the biggest upheavals ever in terms of technology,” says Peter Curren, Global Infrastructure Director of Ports America. “Our industry is undergoing a huge change, applying data for better insight and decisions. You’re seeing a digital supply chain emerge from what has been a very manual process for decades.
”Ports America, the largest terminal operator in the U.S., has been at the forefront of shipping operations for more than 90 years, and is leading the way into this new era. Extending across the country, Ports America focuses on stevedoring‚ the loading and reloading of cargo ships. The company operates eighty facilities in forty-two locations and is continuing to grow.
Ports America relies on technology for its most critical operations. However, as the company has expanded, keeping these multiple IT systems aligned to its business priorities became more difficult. Ports America needed a solution to fully integrate its diverse systems and technologies to accelerate its digital transformation, improve insight and control, and free IT to focus on business priorities.
SOLUTION
After considering many options, Ports America chose a solution based on Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS, software that removes infrastructure silos and simplifies how they run their applications. It lets the company’s IT team focus on delivering value through their applications instead of managing infrastructure by converging operations across cloud, with one-click infrastructure and application management.
“Ports America runs key systems, like a terminal operating system, what we call a ‘TOS,’” says Curren. “This is the lifeblood of a terminal. It has a lot of foundation elements, like databases and apps on many platforms. All of this needs a good home, and we’ve found Nutanix to be the perfect location.”
Bringing Siloed Systems Together
With Enterprise Cloud OS, Ports America can smoothly integrate its multiple dispersed systems and processes together as part of a virtualized, software-defined hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI).
“Nutanix has enabled us to expand our own capabilities on terminal, to allow them to be more functional—and more agile—to their own customers,” says Curren.
To make the most of their investment, Ports America enrolled its IT staff in Nutanix training.
“We were looking for a higher level of understanding within our IT teams so we could put all the powerful capabilities of Nutanix to use, so we took advantage of the training provided by Nutanix,” says Curren. “Today over half our hands-on staff are fully trained on the Nutanix platform.”
BENEFITS
Enhanced Business Agility
Nutanix has helped Ports America create a foundation for a more nimble organization that can respond to changes fast.
“The solution has enabled us to really take a lot of our workloads from critical business systems, both locally at terminal and in centralized locations, and respond in a much more agile way to business requirements,” says Curren.
Reliability Powers Competitiveness
Even a few minutes of downtime can have a serious impact across a global supply chain. With Nutanix, Ports America gains the visibility to quickly discover and mitigate issues before they can escalate.
“Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS has helped us focus on keeping any interruption to business operations very short,” says Curren. “The ability to rapidly resolve issues and avoid significant delays to business processes has been a fantastic achievement.”
Maintaining high availability is critical for Ports America, regardless of where the organization is operating. Its new Nutanix solution enables the company to provide consistent, dependable performance to markets of all sizes.
“Nutanix has helped us compete better in small markets,” says Curren. “The solution is a perfect fit for our organization, and thanks to the reliability, it has made us more competitive when we want to deliver to those places.”
NEXT STEPS
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS has provided Ports America with a springboard for future innovation. Curren and his team are looking forward to building on the solution by using it to deliver more automation in their environment, enhancing processes to make them even more efficient in the coming years.
“Within the transportation and logistics field, the next big things will be the use of AI and video analytics to drive automation and decision making,” says Curren. “Pure data is seeing its peak now, but the next wave will focus on automation using that data.”
With its Nutanix solution in place, Ports America can easily extend its infrastructure solution to take advantage of these data-intensive technologies as its needs change. Nutanix provides predictable performance, scalability, and high availability for big data analytics, AI, IoT applications, and more, enabling Ports America to evolve its infrastructure with confidence in the years ahead.