“Operating a data centre smoothly is one thing, but moving it is something completely different. It’s not just about moving servers, but moving services, too. Bell proposed and delivered the most creative solution.”
- Pierre-Etienne Croteau, IT Manager,
The Customer
Groupe Promutuel, the fourth largest insurance company in Québec
The Need
To implement a more efficient and cost-effective data centre
The Solution
Virtualization solution designed by Bell
The Results
- Full compliance with CRTC regulations
- Data is more accurate
- Enables reporting and audit trails
- Ability to predict recurring costs
- Added prospects and tools to track productivity
- Instant results and updates save time and improve productivity
Groupe Promutuel
As Québec’s fourth largest insurance company, geographical distribution is Groupe Promutuel’s strength. But until recently, it also represented a significant challenge in terms of technology.
Groupe Promutuel supplies 500,000 insured members through four legal entities: property insurance (auto, home, farm and business), life and health insurance, and financial services (loans, mortgages, savings accounts). The company, which employs 1,600 people, is based in Québec City and has 500 offices across the province. Many of those offices are situated in remote locations and accessible only using low-frequency digital subscriber line (DSL) connections, and this posed problems in terms of security, backup, and timely communication between employees and customers. To complicate matters further, multiple versions of software were installed on the network and there were wide-area network bottlenecks and significant deployment issues.
The Need
When the company decided to move its data centre from Québec City to Montréal, it proved the ideal opportunity to remedy many of the IT issues. Still, management worried that moving hundreds of servers from one location to another would be extremely expensive and would disrupt the flow of business due to extensive system downtime.
The Solution
Not so, said the Professional Services team at Bell. Drawing from their experience of implementing many virtualization projects, Bell explained moving to a virtualized environment would enable Groupe Promutuel to drastically reduce their quantity of servers while seamlessly moving the data from one city to another without employees noticing anything different.
Why virtualization? Today’s enterprises have to manage increasingly complex applications and larger volumes of data using their existing technology resources and capacity. At the same time, users are demanding anytime, anywhere access to ICT (information and communications technology) resources, which puts even more focus on storage and application delivery functions.
The Results
Virtualization offers a combination of solutions that can be applied to different levels and areas within an organization’s ICT infrastructure, including physical platforms (systems and storage) or the resources running on those platforms (applications, files, user desktops). By applying a virtualization strategy, organizations increase reliability, availability and uptime of their ICT resources and enable on-demand access to resources for multiple users. Additionally, they can save money and build a more efficient and responsive organization.
“Operating a data centre smoothly is one thing, but moving one is something completely different,” says Pierre-Etienne Croteau, IT Manager, Groupe Promutuel. “It’s not just about moving servers, but moving services, too. Bell proposed and implemented the most creative solution.”
Virtualization Solutions from Bell are comprised of a variety of software, each selected to meet a specific need. Since Groupe Promutuel was entrenched in Citrix and was impressed with Bell’s expertise in it, it made sense to incorporate it into the environment as much as possible.
On the Citrix side, Citrix XenApp™ was selected to access business applications securely and easily, to reduce complexity for service distribution, to enhance security, and to extend useful life for workstations. Citrix Repeater™ would optimize network capacity and overcome various application irritants. Citrix Provisioning Server was also included for rapid deployment and upgrading of XenApp servers and virtual workstations, and to significantly reduce storage needs.
In addition, Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) was selected for deployment management, patch management and asset management, while Microsoft Application Virtualization was chosen to make software independent of hardware to eliminate conflicts between applications and versions.
Working closely with Bell’s Professional Services team, Groupe Promutuel’s virtualization project got underway. Before moving any of the physical servers, a network was established between the old data centre in Québec City and the new site in Montréal. Next, Groupe Promutuel’s 241 servers were virtualized and then delivered easily through VMware as images to the new Bell hosting facility. The servers, now running VMware images, were installed on 12 large new physical servers – each one capable of running 15 to 25 virtual servers. Once it was evident that all of the servers in Montréal were running properly, Bell and Groupe Promutuel collapsed the old data centre. During the transition, Groupe Promutuel users deployed Citrix to access their software applications.
“Thanks to Bell’s expertise, our employees didn’t experience any downtime even though we moved a data centre 200 km away,” says Mr. Croteau. “In fact, they didn’t notice any changes in service – it was good before and it is good now. All in all, it was a very smooth ride.”
It took one year to move the entire data centre. Today, more than 80 per cent of the Groupe Promutuel’s servers are virtual ones, drastically reducing energy consumption.
The virtualization project has resulted in tremendous savings for Groupe Promutuel in terms of reduced costs, improved efficiencies and overall impact on the environment. Given the $20,000 average price tag for one server, reducing the number of servers from 241 to 12 has achieved significant capital expenditure savings. Because users were accessing images instead of actual applications during the data centre move, any disruption in service was not apparent and customer service continued as usual. Bell ensured there were three backup alternatives on the go – tape, physical servers and virtual servers – to minimize disruptions. In addition, using Citrix the IT team can log onto the server room through a virtual laptop and easily manage the operation as if they are physically on site.
“In terms of return on investment, we are buying far fewer servers so we are saving millions of dollars,” says Mr. Croteau. “And the fewer servers we have to buy, the less IT administration is necessary. We can do much more with much less.”
Data recovery and business continuity have improved because all data is now replicated to both the data centre and to a secondary site – especially important given that Groupe Promutuel is in the insurance business.
“When you’re working on a virtual server, it’s easier to build a disaster recovery plan,” explains Mr. Croteau. “Just as we moved data from one site to another, we can move our data to a disaster recovery site and get back up and running quickly because the servers run much more efficiently.”
To top it off, the virtualized environment uses much less energy than physical servers for far greater capability. This has enabled Groupe Promutuel to significantly reduced its carbon footprint and become a more environmentally responsible corporate citizen.
Bell provides a comprehensive range of virtualization services and solutions that can be customized to meet your organizational goals and infrastructures. These can be provided on an individual basis, or combined to create an end-to-end, multi-layered virtualization architecture.
“A project of this magnitude required a knowledgeable partner who understands our business and is committed to our success,” says Mr. Croteau. “Thanks to Bell’s creativity and dedication, we have changed the way we deliver services to our employees and customers.”
For more information visit bell.ca/enterprise, or request to be contacted by a Bell representative at bell.ca/contact-me.