Hills Group’s new virtualised infrastructure allows them the complete flexibility to do rollouts across the organisation which they were unable to consider before. This case study shows the approach ITS took to provision the new infrastructure.

1. 1 Case study Hills Group Transformed By IT Virtualisation
www.itsis.co.uk
CASE STUDY
HILLS GROUP TRANSFORMED
BY IT VIRTUALISATION

2. 2 Case study Hills Group Transformed By IT Virtualisation
Hills Group was set-up in 1900 and has
grown significantly from its original roots in
quarrying and construction materials into waste
management, and more recently, housing
development. Hills Group currently has over 440
employees, both office and field-based, with over
30 sites across Western and Southern England.

3. 3 Case study Hills Group Transformed By IT Virtualisation
INTRODUCTION
As a business with office locations as far north as Kidderminster and as far
south as Dorchester, managing the IT infrastructure and support requirements
across the multi-site operation was increasingly difficult. In addition, parts of
the infrastructure were aging and naturally coming to the end of life, resulting
in patchy reliability. With one IT support analyst and an IT manager reporting to
the Head of IT, Hills Group needed additional expertise and resource to make
the required upgrades, stabilise the IT infrastructure and provide ongoing
monitoring and maintenance of the new solution.
In 2011, Hills Group decided to put the IT requirements out to tender and after
a rigorous procurement process, ITS was selected to engage on an ongoing
basis on a number of projects, the primary project was the stabilisation of the IT
infrastructure. The core framework of the six month project included:
• roadmap for technical architecture and migration plan
• hardware selection process
• software license upgrades
• post go-live support and escalation process
Hills Group needed additional expertise to
make the required upgrades, stabilise the IT
infrastructure and provide ongoing monitoring
and maintenance of the new solution.

4. 4 Case study Hills Group Transformed By IT Virtualisation
THE CHALLENGE
Hills Group’s infrastructure consisted of a series of 15 HP servers with legacy
software. There were issues with domain controllers, out-of-warranty hardware
and out-of-date licensing with some of the software. This was compounded
by the servers using one power supply resulting in high risk of data loss and
service interruption. As a business-critical function, the upgrade and migration
of the infrastructure required careful planning and technical expertise.
…the upgrade and migration of the
infrastructure required careful planning and
technical expertise.

5. 5 Case study Hills Group Transformed By IT Virtualisation
WHAT WE DID
In order to ensure a seamless transition to the new infrastructure, a period of
planning and roadmapping was required. As part of this, the technical service
and delivery team at ITS undertook a series of interviews with the internal
Hills Group team to determine the most appropriate migration plan over a six
month period.
Once the initial planning stages had been completed, ITS started with the
hardware required for the virtualised solution. After careful consideration of
Hills Group’s requirements, one Linux and one Microsoft server were installed.
These two systems needed significant preparatory work as the original15
pieces of disparate server hardware were transformed into a single resilient,
redundant SAN cluster.
As part of the migration plan, the Active Directory was updated and Exchange
Server was standardised. Both of which were long and complex due to the
number of users with varied storage limits across the multi-site organisation.
In addition, the virtualisation extended beyond simply servers. VMWare View,
a virtual desktop solution, was trialled with 20 users to reduce the overhead
on hardware and enable remote access from anywhere using a thin client and
PC over IP (PCoIP). The roll-out of the full desktop virtualisation was finalised a
few months later when Hills Group had a significant office move involving 90 IT
users.
In addition to this, ITS was tasked with providing:
• ongoing support desk and escalation support post go-live
• proactive IT management and monitoring with regard to disk usage and
error messages
ITS have been very flexible and accommodating
whilst implementing the solutions to ensure
little downtime within our organisation”

6. 6 Case study Hills Group Transformed By IT Virtualisation
THE RESULT:
BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
For Hills Group, the most significant difference is the stable working
environment allowing them to reduce their hardware footprint across the
organisation. In addition, the new virtualised infrastructure has allowed them
the flexibility to do rollouts across the organisation which they were unable to
consider before.
Three years on and ITS have continued to provide roadmapping services to
ensure the IT infrastructure remains stable and resilient. In late 2013, the
hardware was refreshed to facilitate a relocation to a new head office as per
the intended roadmap. The original hardware was repurposed to maximise the
initial investment and a disaster recovery solution implemented, with the all
backup data hosted on ITS’ private platform housed at Ark Data Centres.
Their turnaround time, flexibility and
knowledge is refreshing. They’re the nuts
and bolts of our organisation.”
HELEN LOCK, IT MANAGER, HILLS GROUP

7. 7 Case study Hills Group Transformed By IT Virtualisation
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and well-planned IT resources that help
you achieve your business goals.
For IT that really does deliver, call us on 0845 241 7410
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