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

Summary

Critical Systems Failure resulting in 4-day outage

Contacted CSG on Friday, operational by Monday

Team worked day and night over the weekend utilising: 

• Azure IaaS, Azure AD, Azure Files
• Azure Windows Virtual Desktops
• Office365 and Teams for Collaboration

The Client

The client is Australia's leading owner-operated labour hire business network. It operates under a franchisee model, with over 20 franchisees located across Australia. They service industries across; Healthcare, Construction, Transport and many more.

Their current MSP had suffered a catastrophic outage meaning the client had no access to any systems or data and their business had ground to a halt.

The Recruitment Firm was referred to Cloud Solutions Group and contacted us late on a Friday afternoon to see if we could help them. We immediately engaged and over the weekend the team migrated their mail to Office365, Microsoft Teams for collaboration, their File data to Azure Files and delivered this securely utilising Azure Windows Virtual Desktops. This meant they were operational on the Monday.

Once they were operational and the client’s requirements for Security and Disaster Recovery were determined, CSG implemented Azure Backup for Data Protection and Azure Site Recovery for failover to a different Region.

In consultation with the client we determined that Microsoft365 E3 licenses were the best fit for the client, given it includes; Windows Virtual Desktop licensing, all the core Mail and Collaboration tools as well as a comprehensive suite of security services to protect devices and data.

The first stages for security were focussed on protecting Users Identity and MFA with Conditional Access was deployed. In additional to this Data Loss Prevention (DLP) was implemented with Azure Information Protection and Intune for managing both domain and non-domain joined devices and their applications.

This will be an ongoing process of continuous improvement with the client.

Challenges

· Severity One outage critically impacting business operations for 4 days.

· Current MSP unable to help and resolve issues.

· No access to data and applications.

· Insufficient Disaster Recovery and Security solutions in place.

Our Approach

As soon as we understood the client’s predicament, we engaged without a signed contract to get them out of a really tough predicament. The process we followed was:

· Rapidly understood the client’s architecture and environment.

· Collaboratively designed a solution with them.

· Worked over the weekend so they could be operational by Monday.

· Reviewed and optimised the architecture to align to best practices and the clients Security and Business Continuity needs.

Solution/Technologies

The solution provided many improvements over their existing architecture:

A Cloud solution based on Azure and Office365

Given their situation they needed a rapidly scalable platform that would allow staff to work immediately. Azure was chosen as the best platform given their existing investment in Microsoft technologies.

Microsoft Teams and Outlook Online for Collaboration

These best of breed services were simple and quick to implement and allowed the client the communicate with their staff and clients securely and efficiently.

Azure Files for File services

Azure Files is Microsoft’s managed file service. This is a secure and easy to consume service and facilitated rapid access to their critical file data.

Multi Factor Authentication (MFA), with Conditional Access 

To secure authentication and identity, we deployed Azure MFA with Conditional Access providing an additional layer of context-based security on top of MFA.

Azure Information Protection (AIP) for Data Loss Prevention(DLP)

AIP was implemented to allow the client to have granular control over access to their data and the flow of data in and out of their organisation.

Azure Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD)

The client had been using Horizon View Virtual Desktops. WVD is a relatively new service from Microsoft that delivers best of breed secure remote access to applications and data. WVD was implemented quickly allowing users to work remotely from any device and any location.

Microsoft Intune for Endpoint Management

Given the volume of remote sites and users with non-standard mobile devices and laptops, it was agreed that it was advisable to deploy Microsoft Intune to centrally manage and secure corporate data and applications on all of these devices. 

Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup

Both Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup were implemented to protect critical data as well as replicate data and servers to a separate Azure Region for Disaster Recovery.

Improved end user experience with enhanced collaboration and performance 

By migrating away from legacy on premises tools to Microsoft’s modern Workplace 365 services and the Azure cloud platform, the users now have access to the best tools in the market as well as a resilient and scalable platform.

Cost savings

Even with all the new services and features we still saved the client money on their monthly IT costs.

Value delivered

· Saved the client from a business-critical outage

· Immediate cost savings

· Improved productivity

· Increased scalability and agility

· Removed reliance on legacy technology

· Reduced operational complexity

· Rapid access to shared files

· Improved user experience

· Enhanced data resiliency

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

· Our agility and client first philosophy- we engaged straight away and helped the client over a weekend.

· Our ease of doing business- we helped the client without any commercials in place as it was the right thing to do.

· Our Cloud capability- we had the expertise to get the client up and running over a weekend.

If you need help with similar challenges or are planning a cloud migration please contact us here: https://cloudsolutionsgroup.com.au/contact-us or email info@cloudsolutionsgroup.com.au

 Summary

8 RAS(Reading and Assessment Sites) 

44 fixed and 2 mobile assessment centres

Reduced cost and power by over 40%

Improved performance by more than 30%

2 node vSAN ROBO at each site

Scalable, resilient and cost-efficient solution with

Integrated Backup and Disaster Recovery

Client

Cancer Screening Organisation (CSO) is a charity providing free cancer screening and assessment services across Victoria. 

Cancer Screening Organisation provides free screening to eligible clients over the age of 40 years. CSO actively invites eligible clients between the ages of 50 and 74 years to screen. In 2018/19, CSO screened over 265,000 women and aims to increase screening by 3% annually.

Screening is offered by 42 fixed and 2 mobile screening services located across Victoria. Each screening site is linked to one (1) of eight (8) Reading and Assessment Services (RAS), including four (4) metropolitan Melbourne and four (4) in regional Victoria. 

The RAS deliver clinical services including reading and further tests to perform required additional assessment to ascertain the possibility of cancer detection. 

Challenges

· CSO were looking for a Partner to help them define and deliver a strategy and solution for their PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) data to address the challenge of rapid data growth with the approach of 3D imagining technologies.

· Legacy equipment reaching end of life was traditional 3 tier; SAN, servers and switching solution.
 

Our Approach

We spent a considerable amount of time consulting with the client to understand their data growth patterns and the impact that new 3D imaging technologies would have on their business, data growth and performance requirements. The process we undertook was:

· A series of workshops with various business units to understand the organisational strategy, as well as the planned adoption of new imaging technologies over the next 3-5 years.

· An options analysis of the relevant available solutions in the market and a recommended Solution Architecture to address the needs of the business. 

· Sourcing, Detailed Design & Implementation of the solution with the client. 

Solution

The solution provided many improvements over their existing architecture:

A Hyperconverged solution with VMware vSAN

Moving away from a traditional Server, SAN model, to a 2 Node VMware vSAN Remote Office Branch Office solution (ROBO). This decreased the rack space and power requirements by over 50%.

Reduced complexity with policy-based management

vSAN is integrated into the VMware vSphere hypervisor allowing for a simple integrated management and deployment experience via vCenter. Unlike traditional storage arrays, vSAN also allows you to define policies at a Virtual Machine and vDisk layer providing granular management capabilities.

Improved end user experience and data throughput with enhanced performance and scalability

This was achieved using new Dell r7515 Servers and All Flash storage at each location. As CCO was increasing the use of 3D imaging, the use of all flash storage has had a very positive experience for staff and patients by reducing the amount of time it tasks to carry out the assessment. 

Backup and Disaster Recovery built in

Deploying backup and Disaster Recovery utilising vSphere snapshots and replication to CSO’s Datacentres is policy based and simplified with vSAN and vCenter.

Cost savings

We reduced the Cost of the solution by over 50% by moving to a Hyperconverged solution. 

Technology

· New Dell R7515 servers with All Flash storage at each of the 8 RAS sites.

· Backup and Disaster Recovery replication utilising VMware Snapshots and vSphere replication.

· vSAN ROBO 7.0.

Value delivered

· Immediate cost savings

· Increased scalability and agility

· Removed reliance on legacy technology

· Reduced operational complexity

· Improved user experience and performance

· Enhanced data resiliency

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 health organisations

· We have over 10 years of industry experience with Health Organisations and PACS storage solutions

If you are a Health or MRI needing help with similar challenges with your PACS data or infrastructure please contact us here: https://cloudsolutionsgroup.com.au/contact-us or email info@cloudsolutionsgroup.com.au