Hutch uses Thakral One to achieve high performance and scalability

Tuesday, 9 September 2014 02:02 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Sri Lanka, along with many other developing markets, has been aligning with the mobile data access to the handset landscape especially with feature phones on pre-paid packages, while an increasing number of Sri Lankans are using mobile phones to access the internet. All operators, including Hutchinson Telecom Lanka (Hutch), have had to upgrade their infrastructure to meet the new communication requirements. This meant upgrading their existing infrastructure to offer more advanced features that had the capacity to expand with the change in market demands.

As an immediate approach to meet these new requirements, Hutch decided to upgrade their basic reload application run on a physical data centre environment to a virtual environment with more advanced features and the internet access infrastructure to effectively manage the growth of 3G data traffic to and from their system. After a thorough evaluation of the different solutions available from a multitude of IT Service Providers in the market, Hutch decided to utilise RedHat Enterprise Virtualization for upgrading the Reload application and an end-to-end Juniper Network solution to upgrade their internet infrastructure. As an outcome of the same stringent evaluation process, Hutch picked Thakral One, a leading technology consultancy and implementation partner for infrastructure solutions and services in Sri Lanka and in 13 other countries across Asia, to carry out the end-to-end implementation. Commenting on the performance of the virtualised data centre, after the successful implementation, Hutch Telecom General Manager IT Asanga Ranasinghe said, “By implementing a server consolidation strategy, space utilisation and efficiency in the datacentre increased by many fold. With the design of having each application within its own virtual server, we managed to prevent one application from impacting another during an upgrade or when making changes. The rollout of virtual machines accelerated infrastructural growth and enterprise performance for Hutch and most importantly provided our customers a whole new level of value added services,” he added.

With the new virtual environment, the IT managers were able to get a central console view of the entire applications during provisioning, deployment and analysis. Also they experienced significant reductions in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) where the company managed to achieve up to 50%-75% savings in terms of energy, cooling, maintenance, proprietary licensing and hardware replacement costs. The new internet infrastructure upgrade implemented by using Juniper Network products proved similar results. The new solution was completely redundant, unified in design with high speed and performance with all components operating in high availability to avoid system downtime in case of a device failure. Commenting on Hutch’s initiative to converge their infrastructure and related services to a reliable, scalable and future proof system, Hutch CEO Thirukumar Nadarasa said, “Hutch experienced an increase in stability, flexibility and scalability by using virtualisation. It not only reduced our hardware footprint and TCO, but more importantly made our business more agile in order to rapidly respond to the ever changing business needs. It also enabled us to build an ideal infrastructure platform for the future.” “In addition we needed an internet access infrastructure network that was very scalable and stable, and had a better cost efficiency. Thakral One was able to meet our requirements using the best in class network architecture products from Juniper. They have responded to our call for improvements with a structured and inclusive approach ensuring the solution is a win-win for both parties,” Nadarasa concluded. Applauding the selection of Thakral One as the implementation partner for the virtualised solution at Hutch, Thakral One Head of Presales and Technology Thilina Chandrasiri said, “We have been implementing infrastructure solutions in Sri Lanka and the region for well over a decade. With our highly skilled technical team, the implementation and transition was managed smoothly and to the complete satisfaction of the customer. Hence, it is of no surprise to me as to why we were selected as the implementation partner in these instances, as we have an experienced team who has mastered the subject over a long period of time for similar enterprise customers.” Thakral One, a member of Thakral Group Singapore, is a leading technology-consulting partner for Infrastructure Solutions and Services in Sri Lanka and in 13 countries across Asia. The company specialises in a host of infrastructure solutions in networking & security, servers & storage solutions, virtualisation, data centre & end-point-device management, surveillance systems and structured cabling. Through partnerships with leading vendors such as HP, IBM, Microsoft, VMware, Red Hat, Juniper, CA technologies, Fortigate, Hikvision and Palo Alto Thakral One offers comprehensive, cost efficient end-to-end solutions and reliable long-term managed support to organisations.