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.