DANBRO EMC VSPEX delivers the IT Agility needed for 100 percent growth OVERVIEW

DANBRO
EMC VSPEX delivers the IT Agility needed for 100
percent growth
OVERVIEW
Danbro provides specialised accountancy and payroll services to thousands of
independent contractors and freelancers throughout the U.K. Employing an elite team
of fully qualified chartered accountants, Danbro helps temporary employees by
providing consulting advice as well as payroll and finance services. Danbro also offers
an accounting service for larger contracting firms.
BUSINESS CHALLENGES
The global economic crisis has actually benefitted Danbro's business—driven by an
ESSENTIALS
ever-larger percentage of workers who are turning to freelance and contracting work
as traditional employment becomes scarce. With the company's plan to double its
Industry
revenues over the next five years, the Danbro IT team knew it needed to focus on
Accounting and payroll services
business requirements, with a more solution-driven approach that could accelerate
Company Size
growth. Areas needing attention included data storage, backup, and recovery.
200 employees; more than 6,000
With servers at capacity, accountants were required to delete old files from databases
independent contractor clients
before they could save new ones. In addition, Danbro's critical Microsoft application
Business Challenges
environment was experiencing performance problems.
•
Growth projected at 100 percent
within five years
•
IT components lacked scalability
and servers had reached capacity
•
Storage was difficult to manage
•
Tape-based backups were
incomplete and time consuming
•
Disaster recovery and failover
capabilities needed improvement
Solutions
•
EMC VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure: EMC VNX unified
storage, VMware vSphere, Cisco
UCS blade servers, and Cisco
Catalyst networking
For data protection, Danbro relied on an inefficient and incomplete tape backup
system in which many important core documents, fundamental to the company's
operation, were not being backed up appropriately. Danbro also wanted to improve its
disaster recovery and IT failover capabilities.
"We were relying on a collection of components that was neither scalable nor fit for
purpose, with many constraints and bottlenecks. We were struggling to save the data
we needed on a daily basis," says Phil Anderton, director of operations, Danbro. "We
had top accountants, leaders in their field whose time is very expensive, having to
delete files so they could carry on their work. It was not an ideal situation."
Working with Synapse 360, an EMC Signature Partner, Danbro implemented a
comprehensive new data center virtualization and storage infrastructure from EMC.
SOLUTIONS
At the heart of Danbro's new solution is an EMC® VSPEX™ Proven Infrastructure,
which brings together best-of-breed systems for storage, virtualization, networks, and
servers. VSPEX includes EMC VNX® unified storage, VMware® vSphere™ virtualization,
Cisco UCS blade servers, and Cisco Catalyst networking. An EMC Data Domain®
•
EMC Data Domain
•
VMware vCenter SRM
recovery for Danbro's new IT environment.
•
Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft
RAPID DEPLOYMENT TO MITIGATE RISK
SQL Server
deduplication storage system provides comprehensive and cost-effective backup and
The EMC solution replaces Danbro's previous environment of off-the-shelf servers and
switches with best-of-breed components that have been fully tested and validated by
EMC, Cisco, and VMware for interoperability and performance.
CUSTOMER PROFILE
Results
•
•
"With VSPEX, the value proposition is immediately apparent because the really time-
Enabled fast deployment—
consuming and difficult work of developing a cohesive solution has already been
infrastructure up and running in
done," says Joe Coxon, EMC specialist, Synapse 360. "To its credit, the Danbro team
only five weeks
was able to clearly articulate its requirements for a complete IT solution based on
Reduced backup times by 21
hours per week
•
Provided seamless support for
existing application infrastructure
•
Enabled fast deployment via
field-tested components
•
Reduced time-consuming and
proven components, the very definition of VSPEX."
As a result, Danbro was able to deploy the new infrastructure in record time—about
five weeks from procurement to live production.
"Once we became aware of the extent of the business risk with the old configuration,
it was vital that we remove that risk as quickly as possible," Anderton says. "That was
a huge part of the value proposition for VSPEX—the ability to address our critical
business requirements in a minimum amount of time."
manual data management
TRANSFORMING THE MICROSOFT ENVIRONMENT
tasks—saving high-value
The EMC VSPEX infrastructure works seamlessly to support Danbro's existing
employees 20 hours per week
Microsoft environment, consisting of Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server
applications, and Windows Server, as well as a suite of custom-developed accounting
applications that run in the Microsoft environment.
"With VSPEX, we did not have to abandon the applications that are core to our
business," Anderton says. "VSPEX has transformed our Microsoft environment: VNX
has boosted application performance and VMware has enabled new levels of
scalability, with centralized management and control."
"VSPEX has transformed our Microsoft environment: VNX has
boosted application performance, and VMware has enabled new
levels of scalability, with centralized management and control."
Phil Anderton
Director of Operations at Danbro
Now that Danbro's Microsoft environment is properly supported on VSPEX, business is
back at the forefront. The company can focus on supporting its clients.
"Without IRIS, without the SQL Server, without email and Microsoft Exchange, we
literally can’t function. Without those applications, we can’t do business," Anderton
says. "That’s why we’ve invested in the VSPEX solution, to make sure that we don’t
fall over and we don’t stop trading."
TUNING UP VMWARE CLOUD MANAGEMENT
Danbro's new infrastructure has yielded significant time savings at virtually every
level of the business and enabled the company to operate more efficiently. Seniorlevel, high-billing members of the professional staff have been freed from mundane
tasks such as deleting files off servers, and the IT department has seen a virtual
elimination of complaints from users regarding slow performance or missing data.
Danbro's VSPEX deployment leverages the VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager
tool for disaster recovery. Also, by replacing its physical servers with a 100-percent
virtualized environment, Danbro has removed multiple points of failure and leveraged
VMware to provide high availability for all applications. Danbro now has a powerful
selling point to help it differentiate its services and attract new levels of higher-end
clients that expect iron-clad data protection.
"With EMC, we know that a major IT incident would not jeopardize our data nor affect
our business," says Anderton. "This puts us in a whole new, 'Ivy League' class of
service providers, because we're able to say with confidence that our clients' critical
data can be restored."
SECURE DATA DELIVERS PEACE OF MIND
The Data Domain deduplication storage appliance is a vital component in Danbro's
new IT infrastructure. Replacing a backup-to-tape solution that took up to 24 hours
and often missed important files, Data Domain now performs thorough backups in
less than four hours. The solution's client-side deduplication architecture ensures that
only changed blocks of data are moved across the network, saving large amounts of
bandwidth in addition to the time savings.
"It's difficult to put into words how valuable it is to our company to have a truly
professional backup system in place now. Since every backup is complete, we have
great peace of mind that our critical data is all protected," Anderton notes.
With the smaller window for file backups and the elimination of manual backup
processes, the IT staff is freed to work on more strategic projects. In fact, Anderton
estimates that Danbro is saving up to 20 resource hours a month through the
automated backup and recovery features of Data Domain.
PROPELLING THE BUSINESS FORWARD
With a plan to double its size over the next five years, Danbro also has plans to move
to a new headquarters.
"The way Synapse has designed this solution, moving our operations will be as simple
as just falling back off to the DR system, moving the primary equipment to the new
building and hooking it up, downloading data from the DR, and starting it all up,"
Anderton comments. "That can be easily accomplished in a weekend with no
downtime, whereas it might have taken at least a week with a complete computing
outage under our old configuration."
He adds, "Working with EMC and Synapse on VSPEX, we have a three-way
partnership that combines EMC's technology excellence with Synapse's broad and
deep understanding of how to bring that technology effectively into a business
setting. It's the ideal foundation with which to move our business forward into its next
phase of growth."
CONTACT US
To learn more about how EMC
products, services, and solutions can
help solve your business and IT
challenges, contact your local
representative or authorized reseller—
or visit us at www.EMC.com.
EMC2, EMC, the EMC logo, Data Domain, VNX, and VSPEX are registered trademarks or
trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. VMware, vCenter, and
vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc., in the United States and other
jurisdictions. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. ©
Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. 02/14
Customer Profile H12488
www.EMC.com
EMC believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The
information is subject to change without notice.