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How Intility Uses Intelligent Storage
To Improve Business Outcomes
A discussion on how Norway-based Intility sought and found the cutting edge of intelligent
storage.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett
Packard Enterprise.
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of
the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor
Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation
success stories.
Our next intelligent storage innovation discussion explores how Norway-based Intility
sought and found the cutting edge of intelligent storage. Stay with us now as we learn
how this leading managed platform services provider improved uptime and reduced
complexity for its end users.
To hear more about the latest in intelligent storage
strategies that lead to better business outcomes, please
join me in welcoming Knut Erik Raanæs, Chief
Infrastructure Officer at Intility in Oslo, Norway. Welcome,
Knut.
Knut Erik Raanæs: Thank you, Dana. Thanks for having
me.
Gardner: Knut, what trends and business requirements
have been driving your need for Intility to be an early
adopter of intelligent storage technology?
Raanæs: For us, it is important to have good storage
systems that are easy to operate to lower our management costs. At the same time, it
gives great uptime for our customers.
Gardner: You are dealing not only with quality of service requirements; you also have
very rapid growth. How does intelligent storage help you manage such rapid growth?
Raanæs: By easily having performance trends shown so we can spot when we are
running full. If that happens, we can react before we run out of capacity.
Raanæs

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Gardner: As a managed cloud service provider, it’s important for you to have strict
service level agreements (SLAs) met. Why are the requirements of cloud services
particularly important when it comes to the quality of storage services?
Intelligent storage, worry-free infrastructure
Raanæs: It’s very important to have good quality of service separation because we
have lots of different kinds of customers. We don’t want to have the noise-enabled
problem where one customer affects another customer -- or even the virtual machine
(VM) of one customer affects another VM. The applications should work independently
of each other.
That’s why we have been using Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Nimble Storage. Our
quality of service would be much worse at the VM disk level. It’s very good technology.
Gardner: Tell us about Intility, your size, scope, how long you have been around, and
some of the major services you provide.
Raanæs: Intility was founded in 2000. We have always been focused on being a
managed cloud service provider. From the start, there have been central shared
services, a central platform, where we on-boarded customers and they shared email
systems, and Microsoft Active Directory, along with all the application backup systems.
Over the last few years, the public cloud has
made our customers more open to cloud
solutions in general, and to not having servers
in the local on-premises room at the office.
We have now grown to more than 35,000
users, spread over 2,000 locations across 43
countries. We have 11 shared services
datacenters, and we also have customers with edge location deployments due to high
latency or unstable Internet connections. They need to have the data close to them.
Gardner: What is required when it comes to solving those edge storage needs?
Raanæs: Those customers often want inexpensive solutions. So we have to look at
different solutions and pick the one that gives the best stability but that also doesn’t cost
too much. We also need easy remote management of the solution, without being
physically present.
Gardner: At Intility, even though you’re providing infrastructure-as-a-services (IaaS), you
are also providing a digital transformation benefit. You’re helping your customers mature
and better manage their complexity as well as difficulty in finding skills. How does
intelligent IaaS translate into digital transformation?
The public cloud has made our
customers more open to cloud
solutions in general, and to not
having servers in the local on-
premises room at the office.

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Raanæs: When we meet with potential customers, we focus on taking away concerns
about infrastructure. They are just going to leave that part to us. The IT people can then
just move up in [creating value] and focus on digitalizing the business for their
customers.
Gardner: Of course, cloud-based services require overcoming challenges with security,
integration, user access management, and single sign on. How are those higher-level
services impacted by the need for intelligent storage?
Smart storage security
Raanæs: With intelligent storage, we can focus
on having our security operations center (SOC)
monitor responses the instant they see them on
our platforms. We can keep a keen eye on our
storage systems to make sure that nothing ever
happens on the storage. That can be an early
signal of something happening.
Gardner: Please describe the journey you have been on when it comes to storage.
What systems you have been using? Why have intelligence, insights, and analysis
capabilities been part of your adoption?
Raanæs: We started back in 2013 with HPE 3PAR arrays. Before that we used IBM
storage. We had multiple single-Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) sets and
had to manage hotspots ourselves, so by moving even one VM we had to try and
balance it out manually.
In 2013, when we went with the first 3PAR array, we had huge benefits. That 3PAR
array used less space and at the same time we didn’t have to manage or even out the
hotspots. 3PAR and its active controllers were a great plus for us for many years.
But about one-and-a-half years ago, we started using HPE Nimble arrays, primarily due
to the needs of VMware vCenter and quality of service requirements. Also, with the
Nimble arrays, the InfoSight technology was quite nice.
Gardner: Right. And, of course, HPE is moving that InfoSight technology into more
areas of their infrastructure. How important has InfoSight been for you?
Raanæs: It’s been quite useful. We had some systems that required us to use other
third-party applications to give an expansive view of the performance of the environment.
But those applications were quite expensive and had functionality that we really didn’t
need. So at first we pulled data from the vCenter database and visualized the data. That
was a huge start for us. But when InfoSight came along later it gave us even more
information about the environment.
With intelligent storage, we can
focus on having our security
operations center (SOC)
monitor responses the instant
they see them on our platforms.

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Gardner: I understand you are now also a beta customer for HPE Primera storage. Tell
us about your experience with Primera. How does that move the needle forward for you?
100 percent uptime on the way
Raanæs: Yes, we have been beta testing Primera, and it has been quite interesting. It
was easy to set up. I think maybe 20 minutes from getting it into the rack and just
clicking through the setup. It was then operational and we could start provisioning
storage to the whole system.
And with Primera, HPE is going in with 100 percent uptime guarantee. Of course, I still
expect to deal with some rare incidences or outages, but it’s nice to see a company
that’s willing to put their money where their mouth is, and say, “Okay, if there is any
downtime or an outage happens, we are going to give you something back for it.”
Gardner: Do you expect to put HPE Primera into production soon? How would you use
it first?
Raanæs: So we are currently waiting for our next software upgrade for HPE Primera.
Then we are then going to look at putting it into production. The use case is going to be
general storage because we have so much more storage demand and need to try to
keep it consistent, to make it easier to manage.
Gardner: And do you expect to be able to pass along these benefits of speed of
deployment and 100 percent uptime to your end users? How do you think this will
improve your ability to deliver SLAs and better business outcomes?
Raanæs: Yes, our end users are going to be quite
happy with 100 percent uptime. No one likes
downtime -- not us, not our customers. And HPE
Primera’s speed of deployment means that we have
more time to manage other parts of the platform
and to get better service out to the customers.
Gardner: I know it’s still early and you are still in the proof of concept stage, but how
about the economics? Do you expect that having such high levels of advanced
intelligence across storage will translate into your ability to do more for less, and perhaps
pass some of those savings on?
Raanæs: Yes, I expect that’s going to be quite beneficial for us. Because we are based
in Norway, one of our largest expenses is for people. So, the more we can automate by
using the systems, the better. I am really looking forward to seeing this improve and
getting easier to manage systems and analyze performance within a few hours.
Our end users are going
to be quite happy with 100
percent uptime. No one
likes downtime, not us,
not our customers.

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Gardner: On that issue of management, have you been able to use HPE Primera to the
degree where you have been able to evaluate its ease of management? How beneficial
is that?
Work smarter, not harder
Raanæs: Yes, the ease of management was
quite nice. With Primera you can do the service
upgrade more easily. So with 3PAR, we had to
schedule an upgrade with the upgrade team at
HPE and had to wait a few weeks. Now we can just
do the upgrade ourselves.
And hardware replacements are easier, too. We can just get a nice PDF showing you
how to replace the parts. So it’s also quite nice.
I also like the part of the service processor in 3PAR that’s now just garnered with
Primera; it’s in with the array. So, that’s one less thing to worry about managing.
Gardner: Knut, as we look to the future, other technologies are evolving across the
infrastructure scene. When combined with something like HPE Primera, is there a whole
greater than the sum of the parts? How will you will be able to use more intelligence
broadly and leverage more of this opportunity for simplicity and passing that onto your
end users?
Raanæs: I’m hoping that more will come in the future. We are also looking at non-
volatile memory express (NVMe). That’s a caching solution and it’s ready to be built into
HPE Primera, too. So that’s also quite interesting to see what the future will bring there.
Gardner: I’m afraid we will have to leave it there. We have been discussing how
Norway-based Intility sought and found the cutting-edge of intelligent storage. And we
have learned how this leading managed platform service provider improved uptime and
reduced complexity for its end users.
So please join me now in thanking our guest, Knut Erik Raanæs, Chief Infrastructure
Officer at Intility in Oslo. Thank you so much, Knut.
Raanæs: Thanks for having me.
Gardner: And a big thank you as well to our audience for joining us for this
BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story discussion.
I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing
series of Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews.
Thanks again for listening. Please pass this on to your community, and do come back
next time.
You can do the service
upgrade more easily …
hardware replacements
are easier, too.

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Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett
Packard Enterprise.
A discussion on how Norway-based Intility sought and found the cutting edge of intelligent
storage. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2020. All rights reserved.
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