Client story How a Manufacturing Company Established IT Independence After a Divestiture
After divesting from it's parent organization, a manufacturing company needed help establishing a new data center and migrating its data in a very short timeframe to avoid incurring huge fees.
By Insight Editor / 23 Mar 2022 / Topics: Consulting services Disaster Recovery (DR) Storage Data protection
Facts at a glance
Client industry
Manufacturing
Challenge
In December 2020, a U.S.-based manufacturing company found itself in the middle of a divestiture. Its Canadian-based parent company was attempting a large acquisition and was required to divest the North American manufacturing business to satisfy requirements from the U.S. Department of Justice. The newly divested company needed help establishing its own IT infrastructure and migrating its Active Directory and Microsoft 365™ data and workloads to the new environment.
Solution
We kicked off this project with a SnapStart discovery assessment of the client’s existing IT workloads and technology needs. Following the assessment, we set the client up with a new data center environment and Microsoft cloud tenant and migrated the company’s existing data from Microsoft 365, Active Directory and Azure® into the new IT environment.
Outcomes:
Download the client story
- Achieved IT independence from the client’s parent company by building a modern IT ecosystem from the ground up
- Improved efficiency with automated device provisioning and modern endpoint management
- Addressed skill shortages with staff augmentation and improved employee experience with Insight Service Desk support with ServiceNow
First steps for a divested company
Mergers and divestitures are common practice during the growth of a business. However, for the entities being acquired or divested, the process can be complicated and fraught with uncertainty. This was the case for one manufacturing company. After being divested from its Canadian-based parent company, the U.S.-based organization needed to migrate its data into a new environment and become technologically independent — fast.
The newly formed business was facing a monthly penalty fee of nearly a million dollars if it failed to be completely removed from its parent company’s data center before a given deadline. To meet the incredibly tight timeline, they needed a partner that could help it establish a new data center, set up a new Microsoft® cloud tenant, and migrate its existing data and workloads to the new environments.
IT guidance from a trusted partner
Despite having a defined end goal, the client didn’t know how to move forward. IT leaders weren’t sure how to make a successful split from their parent company. They needed a partner that could disentangle their systems and data from the parent company and guide them on a path toward IT independence.
Luckily, the equity firm managing the divestiture recommended Insight. The equity firm had worked with Insight on multiple projects in the past and knew we would be able to offer the guidance and expertise the company needed to build a new IT ecosystem from the ground up.
The organization’s leadership wanted a full plan in place before selecting a vendor. So, to meet their needs as quickly as possible, we conducted a SnapStart discovery assessment and submitted a project plan. Our proposed plan and the recommendation from the client’s equity firm led the client to choose Insight as its IT partner.
Establishing modern IT infrastructure
There’s a lot of work that goes into building a new data center environment. In this case, we used the results of our SnapStart discovery assessment, which evaluated the client’s existing data, applications, server and storage systems, to inform our go-forward plan. We determined that 25 workloads needed to be migrated from the parent company.
The discovery project began in January, and by late February, the next phase was underway. We helped the client build one net-new data center location and refresh another in an existing site. The build-out process involved:
- Oracle® environment implementation
- SD-WAN firewall and Panorama implementation
- Core and edge network implementation using Cisco and Silver Peak
- DNS and IPAM configuration with Infoblox
- Commvault migration to new CommCell® with policy updates
- Virtualization farm, UCS server farm and Zerto Virtual Replication® implementation
With these measures, we helped the company set up one new data center site and complete a full data center refresh on another using Veeam® Backups and NetApp® storage. To date, we’ve successfully migrated all the client's workloads, including establishing a new Microsoft cloud instance to host its Office 365®, Exchange, OneDrive® and Active Directory® environments.
Making way for modern endpoint management
Our discovery assessment also revealed that the System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) the parent company had been using for device management wasn’t a good fit for the divested organization. Rather than setting up a new instance of SCCM, we recommended forgoing the legacy system in favor of a cloud-native platform.
The client is now managing devices more efficiently thanks to the implementation of Microsoft Intune®, Windows® Autopilot and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager for modern device management.
Learning to adapt and move forward
While the project was a great success for the client, there were a few bumps along the journey. Limited resources, an impossibly tight timeline and the establishment of a brand-new IT partnership all added to the complexity of the project.
The client’s challenges were ultimately too big for quick solutions. So, business leaders petitioned their parent company for an extension on the deadline. They were able to reach an agreement with the parent company and incurred no fees in the process. By working through these growing pains together, we developed a high level of trust and fostered a partnership that brought the project to a successful conclusion.
Looking to the future, we’ll be helping this organization further optimize how it manages devices via our Managed Endpoint solution. As its committed IT partner, Insight is guiding the client on a path toward digital transformation at a pace that aligns to its business goals.
