Global Architecture Firm -Global Design Studio Refresh

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Summary

• Over 850 end users
• 7 business sectors
• 15 studios
• 5 continents
• Global Collaboration enabled
• Centralised Cloud Storage
• Complex and inefficient legacy technology
• Scalable, resilient and cost-efficient solution delivered

The client: A global architectural and consulting practice founded in Australia that specialises in the design and planning of buildings across a wide variety of sectors and disciplines, including aviation and transport, education, science and health, lifestyle and sport. 

The organisation does this as a global design and consulting studio with a team of over 850 experts working across 15 studios in Australia, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. The “Global Studio” model allows them to work collaboratively across time zones and borders, using the latest technology to share design intelligence and strengthen their knowledge base around the world.

The challenges:  These are the challenges the client was facing:

· Architects located in different continents team up on large scale building projects where dozens of people work on a single file. Rapid access across global sites with file locking are not just “nice to have” features, they are critical for the company’s everyday operations.

· Panzura Global file caching solution appliances that were end of life, not meeting business needs and extremely expensive to maintain and replace.

· Overcome the increasing latency that global teams encounter when collaborating on large files.

· Limitations with collaborating across continents and different cloud providers (AWS and Azure); especially between Asia, Europe and the USA.

· Redesign their overall branch office file serving infrastructure to a cloud-centric architecture with better data protection.

· Scale limitations of 2 node Windows Storage spaces solution.

· Provide users with high-performance access to centralised datasets.

· Ageing infrastructure at each of its 18 studios.

· Local backup solution at each studio creating islands of storage and management complexity.

Our Approach

We spent a lot of time collaborating with the client understanding their requirements and frustrations with the Panzura solution. The process we undertook was:

· An options analysis of the available solutions in the market with a recommendation as to what was best fit for the client.

· An extensive Proof of Concept of the Talon/NetApp solution. 

· A solution Architecture of the end state solution.

· Implementation of the solution with the client. 

The solution delivered by Cloud Solutions Group:

· New Lenovo SR630 servers with DE6000F All Flash arrays at each of the 15 studios across the Globe.

· Talon Storage (now called NetApp Global File Cache) Virtual appliances at each studio for Global File Collaboration.

· An HA-pair of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP in the Azure South-East Asia region with a DR copy on a Single-node Cloud Volumes ONTAP instance in East Asia, together with Global File Cache deployed in the client’s USA, UK, China, UAE and Australian locations.

· Consolidated on Azure for Global Cloud provider.

· Utilise Talon (Global File Cache) to replace local backup solution.

The solution delivered:

The solution provided several improvements over their existing architecture:

·  A complete software-based solution- increasing scalability and agility they lacked with the Panzura solution, which is based on hardware appliances installed at every site.

· Reduced complexity by standardising to a single Cloud vendor.

· Standard SMB-based file sharing -enabling interoperability with other systems and freeing them from the vendor lock-in they had with Panzura which uses a proprietary file-sharing protocol.

· True 24/7 global collaborative working environment where every user has rapid access to shared files of all sizes. The NetApp solution uses incremental block-level file sync- which means that it doesn’t suffer from performance deterioration for every new site like on the Panzura solution.

· Improved end user experience with enhanced performance and scalability -with the new Lenovo Servers and All Flash storage at each location.

·  File consolidation with enhanced data resiliency- by hosting their files on Cloud Volumes ONTAP, the client is protecting their business from downtime, data loss, data corruption and ransomware. This protection is supported for the locally cached data at all of their branch offices and they don’t need to invest any time or resources at the branch offices to setup or maintain enhanced data protection.

· Cost savings -by removing the requirement for a local backup solution at each studio as Talon automatically replicates all file data to the cloud and reduced Cloud Storage costs with ONTAP’s storage efficiencies and auto-tiering of infrequently accessed data to low-cost blob storage.

Value delivered

· Immediate cost savings

· Improved productivity

· Increased scalability and agility

· Best practice software-based solution

· Removed reliance on legacy technology

· Reduced operational complexity

· Rapid access to shared files

· Improved user experience

· Enhanced data resiliency

· Cost savings

The relevant Cloud Solutions Group Unique Service Proposition for this project:

· We are vendor-agnostic- we delivered the right fit solution for the client, as opposed to the standard vendors.

· We leaders in technology solutions for architecture & design businesses (3 of the top 4 firms in Australia)

· We are Melbourne-based but have a global delivery footprint

· We have over 10 years of industry experience with Architecture, Construction and Engineering firms.

If you are an Architecture, Construction and Engineering Firm needing help with similar challenges please contact us here: https://cloudsolutionsgroup.com.au/contact-us or email info@cloudsolutionsgroup.com.au

Summary

70% reduction in Infrastructure spend

Hybrid Cloud Solution

Repatriation from Public Cloud

About 20,000 Members 

Leader of the legal profession in Victoria

Costly and inefficient technology

Scalable, fit for purpose and cost-effective solution delivered

Client

Founded in mid 1800’s this legal membership firm is recognised by businesses, government and the general public as the leader of the legal profession in Victoria. With thousands of members on their books, the organisation represents a potent force of opinion and expertise. The firm is able to shape the nature and reputation of the legal profession, and influence reforms to the justice system.

A non-profit organisation dedicated to benefitting its members and the development, maintenance and the sustenance of the law for the benefit of the community.

Challenges

· Several years ago, the client took a cloud first approach and migrated a majority of their infrastructure to the Public Cloud. Some of their key applications took the SaaS route. Office 365 was the chosen tool for Productivity and Collaboration and Citrix was utilised for Remote Access and Disaster Recovery enablement.

· The solution was working well and satisfying the business’ technology needs, but the public cloud cost kept creeping up every month. Being a non-for-profit organisation, it was getting difficult for management to justify the rising operational cost of IT without any added additional benefit.

· Managements perception that cloud adoption will be inexpensive and reduce costs.
 

Our Approach

We spent a lot of time collaborating with the client understanding their requirements and frustrations with the Cloud solution. The process we undertook was:

· An options analysis of the available solutions in the market with a recommendation as to what was best fit for the client. Including ways to decrease the costs of the public cloud environment. 

· An in-depth ROI analysis to ensure that the numbers stack up over the next 3 years and the savings are significant.

· A solution architecture of the end state solution.

· Implementation of the solution with the client. 

Solution

The solution provided many improvements over their existing architecture:

A Solution that fits business financial needs

Achieves significant reduction (approximately 70%) in Data Centre monthly operational expenditure.

Reduced complexity & improve agility

An overall technical architecture that’s easily manageable by a small IT team. We established an agile and dynamic ICT environment that is fit for purpose which can flexibly scale with the business 

Repatriation from All Cloud to Hybrid Cloud

Bring back key infrastructure components that do not benefit from the Public Cloud model to on-premises. Use public cloud as disaster recovery and back up target. 

Highly available and robust working environment

A state-of-the-art automated disaster recovery solution achieved using Zerto which meets clients RPO and RTO. We are using the Public Cloud for backup and archival and meet clients 7-year data retention compliance obligations.

Improved end user experience with enhanced collaboration and flexibility

Office 365 and Citrix Virtual desktop are delivering the flexible and collaborative environment that the customer needs to provide their staff an efficient, easy to use and feature rich remote working solution.

The end user experience was enhanced by the use of an on-premises All-Flash Dell vSan solution.

Cost savings

We reduced the monthly Cost of the solution by approximately 70% which equates to nearly $1 million dollars over 3 years!

Technology

· New Dell R740xd servers with All Flash disks at their Melbourne Data centre to repatriate their key workloads. 

· VMware VSAN to provide the hyperconverged capability and resiliency. .

· Veeam as the key back-up and archival tool utilising S3 storage as the backup target.

· We are utilising Zerto Cloud DRaaS to replicate workloads between the Cloud and on-premises VMware. Zerto also delivers the Disaster Recovery automation, which simplifies the process of recovery in a disaster.

Value delivered

· Immediate cost savings- 70% monthly and $1 million dollars over 3 years

· Improved productivity

· Best practice Hybrid solution

· Reduced operational complexity

· Improved user experience

· Enhanced data resiliency

The relevant Cloud Solutions Group Unique Service Proposition for this project:

· We are vendor-agnostic- we delivered the right solution for the client, as opposed to the standard vendors.

· We are leaders in technology solutions for Legal and Business services sector.

· We have over 10 years of industry experience delivering solutions.

If you are a Legal or Business services firm needing help with similar challenges please contact us here: https://cloudsolutionsgroup.com.au/contact-us or email info@cloudsolutionsgroup.com.au