Case Study

Infrastructure refresh for visible performance & reliability improvements

Customer

Hanley Economic Building Society

Date

Mar – Oct 2019

Project Results

Visible performance and reliability improvements
No longer constrained for disk space and other resources
Completely automated backups with Veeam
Easier to monitor

“We were delighted to work with D2NA on a project that was essential to our broader corporate objective of updating the Society and its infrastructure. D2NA proved to be an excellent choice and their support and execution of this project meant we were very well placed to face the challenges of COVID19 in a way that meant the business has carried on seamlessly.”

Mark Selby, CEO, The Hanley Economic Building Society

The Challenge

When The Hanley Economic’s current Head of Technology, Will Jones, joined the organisation in 2019, the building society’s critical IT infrastructure was due for review and its capability had been more than maximised, resulting in some major performance concerns.

Will and his team were severely limited by the number and the specification of their servers and were facing some capacity challenges. This was leading to unacceptable periods of downtime for critical systems, as well as creating a considerable workload for the IT team in terms of system monitoring and responding to issues.

The Solution

D2NA proposed a solution that would replace The Hanley Economic’s on-premise VMware host servers, SAN and backup system, and deliver visible performance and reliability improvements across all areas.

The solution we implemented is easier to monitor and means Will and his team are no longer constrained when it comes to disk space and other resources. Applications are running faster and backups are now completely automated using Veeam.

The building society’s staff are able to work more efficiently, which in turn is benefiting their customers. For example, the team was able to build a remote desktop server and get a large number of their staff using applications on this server while working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. This would not have been possible if the upgrade had not been completed, but meant the building society was able to maintain service levels and keep all staff fully employed.

The Approach

D2NA had an existing relationship with The Hanley Economic Building Society for their external penetration testing, after connecting through Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce’s professional services arm, finest. But we had not worked with them on a one-off project of this scale previously.

We carried out an initial single day assessment, followed by an in-depth scoping process using various tools and diagnostics. Then we prepared a detailed report with recommendations, and listened carefully to suggest a solution that would fit not only the present needs of the Society but future-proof their infrastructure to provide capacity for growth over the next 5 years. Our team negotiated with key vendors to achieve the best possible price, and we were delighted to be awarded the contract to deliver the project.