OAG Case Study

UBM Aviation are specialists in the supply of data and information products, market intelligence, news and events for the global aviation market. The business has a turnover of $60 million and has in excess of 10,000 customers worldwide. OAG, a UBM Aviation business, is recognized for its comprehensive information and services to the world’s airlines, airports, global distribution systems, aircraft manufacturers, financial institutions, government agencies and travel planners.

Brighter Connections originally contacted OAG in 2008 as part of a telemarketing exercise and built a relationship with Tim Simmons, IT Services & Security Manager. In 2010, OAG found themselves faced with a particular IT challenge….

The Challenge

OAG were about to embark on a move to new business premises; a situation common to many businesses but one which presents a whole host of different challenges to the IT team responsible for the migration of the IT infrastructure to a new site.

Whether a business has outgrown its premises or, as in the case of OAG, a lease expires on existing business premises, the need to relocate presents the perfect opportunity to assess the status quo and look at ways of improving the existing infrastructure to reduce costs and increase efficiencies for the future.

Tim Simmons, IT Services & Security Manager for OAG stated, “The relocation of our business from an old, large office facility to more appropriate premises meant that the business would have to relocate our large data centre, consisting of 40 cabinets and in excess of 200 servers.” Tim continued, “We considered many different options including re-designing and building a new data centre but, in the end, the best solution seemed to be to co-locate the data centre to a hosted provider.  However, migrating 40 cabinets to co-lo would have been an uneconomical and high risk strategy, so the obvious solution was to look at a consolidation and virtualisation project.”

The Solution

A reduction in servers and cabinets would reduce any migration risks and would ensure economic co-location. In addition, with a business continuity and DR strategy already in place, it didn’t make sense for OAG to replicate more than 200 physical servers.
The co-location project also presented OAG with the opportunity to look at refreshing their server and SAN technology across IBM p-series and Intel platforms.
Brighter Connections were invited to do a validation assessment by OAG and were able to offer an unbiased opinion and some honest advice regarding which servers and SANs would best meet their requirements.
After arranging demos and presenting a multi-vendor solution, OAG were convinced Brighter Connections were the ideal partner for this project by offering a total one stop solution from design to delivery across their disparate IT environment. Tim and his team were in total agreement with the final design and flexibility offered by the Brighter Connections’ solution.

The Outcome

OAG successfully reached their objectives by reducing the 200+ servers and 40 cabinets in their data centre down to just 10. The co-location option significantly reduced the level of environmental risk and cost involved - the project also gave OAG the opportunity to refresh their SANs.

Working with Brighter Connections

According to Tim, Brighter Connections are, “a first rate supplier with an excellent attitude towards customer service. The manner in which Brighter Connections dealt with the project was excellent; they were flexible and demonstrated high value customer service.”

The Future….

The modernisation of the OAG IT infrastructure via the investment in a well designed virtualisation platform connected to a high quality multi platform SAN infrastructure, positions the OAG business to take full advantage of further virtualisation opportunities including VDI, vastly improved business continuity recovery times and reduced costs. In addition, this well thought out strategic IT technology transformation will deliver an ROI in just 24 months.