Case Study: Financial Services

Virtual desktop infrastructure built on VMware and HP platform

When an important insurance company launched an increasing number of products, its ICT failed to keep pace with its business. The company became a victim of its own success ... until Freestyle IT provided a solution that would boost performance and maximise agility.

The client and their challenges

Our client is an insurance company, part of the Lloyds of London syndicate, offering a diverse range of insurance products. Their UK head office is located in the City of London. Three branch offices are in other strategic locations.

Having experienced significant growth for three years, the company was unable to find the time to agree an ICT strategy that would be fit for purpose for its current and future needs.

Commercial pressures to design an increasing number of products had led to a ‘just do it’ attitude within the company. But this resulted in an infrastructure that offered little value to the business, was difficult to manage and expensive to support.

The company’s major issue was that the system was fine when it worked. But when problems were encountered, the business stopped functioning.

In short, the company was a victim of its own success. It recognised that an ICT solution was needed and wondered if a virtualisation strategy could provide the answer? However, the company didn’t have the time or expertise to research and design their own solution. But when Freestyle IT were recommended to them, the company could take the next step.

The Freestyle IT solution

Freestyle IT met with the company and quickly established their main objectives within a higher level strategic plan. There were two key factors. Firstly, the ICT required by a mobile workforce who were key to the business. And secondly, there was the need to provision new services without delay or having to buy new hardware.

Freestyle quickly identified that a virtual server infrastructure would be the best foundation for the new ICT services. It would allow the company to test new services in a secure environment and then to migrate any services into production quickly and without the need for new hardware.

The second element of the solution would be to provide the company’s users with a secure, reliable remote desktop. Performance and data security were key. Freestyle’s consultants had expertise in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution - and this proved to be valuable.

Freestyle designed a completely new server, storage and client solution that met current needs and also gave the company a leading-edge, agile solution that would be suitable for many years.

Freestyle’s consultant oversaw the design, testing, implementation and configuration of the new infrastructure. And since then, the Freestyle team have carried out a number of upgrades to the core virtualisation applications, while providing support for the infrastructure and

Discover more

Contact Freestyle IT today on 01256 760922 or by email at
sales@freestyle-it.co.uk

Key Features & Benefits

Virtual infrastructure with increased highavailability and disaster recovery
Greatly improved performance and reliability
Fast and secure remote desktop solution
Headroom for growth as well as reduced hardware footprint and support costs
Improved administration tools
Centralised, secure data storage
Secure, always-available test environment – plus fast provision of new services
Improved environmental credentials

The Results

The company has been delighted with the increased efficiencies, greater performance and reliability. The design has allowed new services and additional users to be integrated seamlessly. Employees can benefit from a fast and secure remote desktop solution.

The virtual infrastructure provides high-availability (HA) and has strengthened disaster recovery capabilities, while reducing the hardware footprint and support costs. Administration and management tools have improved, while secure data storage is now centralised.

The company also benefits from a secure test environment that’s always available, plus enough headroom for growth to meet the needs of the business.

Download

Download this case study (PDF)