{"id":42516,"date":"2021-10-14T11:56:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-14T11:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=960014e8ae757ba489f152ad6beceedd"},"modified":"2021-10-14T11:56:07","modified_gmt":"2021-10-14T11:56:07","slug":"using-hci-to-merge-a-cacophony-of-legacy-it-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/using-hci-to-merge-a-cacophony-of-legacy-it-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Using HCI to merge a cacophony of legacy IT systems"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Mark Samuels<\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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15 Oct, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

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Dal Virdi, IT director at Shakespeare Martineau, found himself in an intriguing position when he joined the law firm in 2018. The business had grown quickly due to a series of\u00a0mergers and acquisitions<\/a>, but rapid growth also meant the firm\u2019s digital infrastructure was overly complex and inefficient.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Virdi knew he\u2019d need to take a different approach if IT was going to continue supporting business growth. After assessing the options with his team, he\u00a0decided the solution to the challenge the firm faced would come in the form of a\u00a0hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI)<\/a>\u00a0platform supplied by technology specialist Nutanix.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to deliver value to our external and internal clients,\u201d Virdi tells\u00a0IT Pro<\/em>. \u201cThere’s never going to be a silver bullet, but the technology we introduced needed to simplify the operations of our internal team, so they could invest their time and effort into activities that will create an advantage for the firm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Handling a mishmash of old and new<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Virdi inherited a complex IT environment. The business doubled in size with the merger\u00a0of Shakespeares and SGH\u00a0Martineau in 2015. Subsequent acquisitions meant the firm, which now employs more than 850 legal experts in offices across the UK, was left with a mix of external providers and internal IT resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With Shakespeare Martineau also having ambitious plans to double its size by 2025,\u00a0Virdi knew IT systems would have to work more effectively, reliably and efficiently to support the firm\u2019s business strategy. The aim was to create a \u201cone-stop-shop\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’d inherited lots of staff, with different skill sets and different backgrounds, and we really wanted to simplify what IT needed to do moving forward. It was a difficult decision \u2013 and it took us a long time to make that decision \u2013 but Nutanix absolutely ticked that box,\u201d says Virdi.<\/p>\n

The firm implemented the Nutanix HCI platform after a thorough evaluation process. Virdi\u2019s direct reports explored various hardware options and were \u201cblown away\u201d by a demonstration at an IT conference. Virdi says, however, he was nervous about their recommendations, at first, because he didn\u2019t have much experience with Nutanix or converged platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I can be quite challenging in terms of some of the probing questions that I ask around the technology and how it works, so it took many months for that decision to be reached,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was either going to be our traditional HP hardware or an alternative \u2013 and Nutanix was the only provider that met the brief as an alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n

The selection process took nine months from the initial discussions to the implementation, during which time Virdi explored reference customers and talked with some of Nutanix\u2019s international clients. He also met the company\u2019s CEO in London and was impressed by how the provider took the time to show how they could make a difference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA number of factors \u2013 the cost being very comparative to what the HP traditional architecture would have incurred, but with the opportunities of improved performance and easy upgrades \u2013 swayed the decision in Nutanix\u2019s favour,\u201d he says. \u201cWe went forward with some specialist tests and the performance just flew, so it was an absolute no-brainer for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best of both worlds\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Virdi says the Nutanix platform offered all the abilities of a\u00a0public cloud-first strategy<\/a>, combined with the security, performance and compliance\u00a0needed from an on-premises private cloud solution<\/a>. The ability to reduce the complexity around support and management was a key factor in adopting the Nutanix platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided a few years ago that we would have a cloud-first approach. But being a law firm \u2013 with many of the legacy applications and systems that we have, and some of the sensitivity around our data \u2013 means that we have to consider anything that we introduce alongside every other system that we still need to run the firm in the way we do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of that, we always considered a hybrid approach \u2013 and Nutanix gave us that opportunity to start to de-camp some of those legacy systems and move them on to a newer platform, to maintain the other systems that were needed, and also give us the performance that we required.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shakespeare Martineau went live with the converged platform in early 2020. The IT team used Softcat as its implementation partner, but also leant on Nutanix\u2019s own expertise to ensure the firm received the desired high quality of delivery.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe experience, once we started to migrate services, and the support that Nutanix gave the internal team, via upskilling and internal education, meant the internal team could pick up how to make the most of the technology very quickly,\u201d says Virdi.<\/p>\n

Back from the brink<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The firm\u2019s initial investment in Nutanix technology cost just below \u00a31.5 million. Virdi says choosing Nutanix gave the company a more performant platform for less money than going down the non-converged route. Traditional hardware would have cost more than \u00a32 million,\u00a0and as the firm\u2019s kit was old\u00a0it needed to be updated anyway.<\/p>\n

The technology is already delivering a tangible return on investment by helping the firm transition its legacy systems<\/a>\u00a0to the cloud. It also provides a flexible and scalable platform for long-term digital transformation plans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Benefits have come from other unanticipated places, too. Last Christmas, the firm ran an annual power down to service generators in its Birmingham office, which also houses the firm\u2019s internal data centre. When it\u00a0was given the green light to return power to IT, the team encountered a number of issues with its traditional HP environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These problems meant Virdi\u2019s team had to\u00a0invoke a full disaster recovery scenario<\/a>\u00a0on the Sunday morning. Thankfully, the firm\u2019s commitment to HCI meant the IT team was able to recover systems within 24 hours \u2013 and before any end users noticed.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf we hadn’t had Nutanix in place, we would probably have been in a world of pain,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we accelerated all of our designs and migration plans wherever we could, and we actually recovered onto our Nutanix platform. The firm was up and running again by the Monday morning without anybody outside the C-suite knowing what had happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virdi says this episode proved the value of the technology and meant the IT team felt sufficiently confident to continue migrating more services to Nutanix. The next step is for Shakespeare Martineau to implement the Nutanix Xi Leap capability, which provides\u00a0disaster recovery as a service<\/a>. The long-term aim is to push more systems to the cloud.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s the sort of strategic direction that we’re trying to take,\u201d he says. \u201cWe’re a law firm, so why would we want to water, maintain and feed our own internal data centres? For lots of new services that we\u2019re buying in, we’ve got a cloud-first approach \u2013 and as technology changes, that becomes even more viable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Samuels<\/p>\n

15 Oct, 2021 <\/p>\n

Dal Virdi, IT director at Shakespeare Martineau, found himself in an intriguing position when he joined the law firm in 2018. The business had grown quickly due to a series of\u00a0mergers and acquis…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42517,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42516\/revisions\/42517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}