CASE STUDY
D
NI began as a procurement business
in 2006, offering cost reduction and
supply chain optimisation solutions
to large corporations. Four years later, the
company set off to specialise in distribution
and retail for the telecommunications
industry and its investment strategy
revolves around owning the route to market
and customer acquisition at the retail point
of purchase.
Currently, DNI’s competitive advantage
rests in its national reach and retail footprint
throughout South Africa, as well as building
close connections with very big partners such
as Cell C, Telkom, Huawei and Edcon.
However, its infrastructure needed an
urgent upgrade due to it frequently freezing,
meaning that users could not access the
network or storage.
Not only that, but due to the DNI’s recent
growth, the company’s ICT infrastructure
needed to support more employees with a
view to expand further in the future.
“Our most important requirements were
availability, as well as added capacity
to cater for the speed at which DNI is
expanding,” said Christiaan Jacobs, Head of
IT at DNI.
DNI was seeking recommendations on
best-of-breed products that would be a
good fit for its business and infrastructure
requirements, in addition to best practice
advice. Running a fairly lean IT division,
the company also wanted to build in a
level of automation and Artificial
Intelligence (AI) for improved, proactive
infrastructure management.
“Based on these requirements, Datacentrix
rolled out a hyperconverged, software-
defined solution catering for DNI’s
requirements for self-management and
optimisation,” said Jacobs.
“The solution combines storage, network
and computer equipment into one chassis,
along with built-in management software.
“This includes an all-flash storage array,
with Artificial Intelligence capabilities that
cannot only monitor the underlying storage
arrays, but also the adjacent data centre
THE SOLUTION COMBINES STORAGE,
NETWORK AND COMPUTER EQUIPMENT
INTO ONE CHASSIS, ALONG WITH BUILT-
IN MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE.
technology. In addition, DNI wanted to
automate its directory service, for automatic
user account creation and de-provisioning
(based on non-activity), to save on these
repetitive, time-consuming tasks.
“Datacentrix’ submission was accepted
in March 2019, not solely based on cost
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effectiveness, but also the organisation’s
skills and expertise, which were an
important checkpoint in this tender
process,” explained Jacobs.
“Having established a relationship with
Datacentrix in my previous role, I was
also aware of the team’s reliability and
execution abilities, and its commitment to
understanding customer environments and
specific requirements.
“I worked with Datacentrix to implement
a major network and wireless rollout. My
experience with Datacentrix – both then
and now – has been that the organisation
offers sound advice, has excellent expertise
and actually listens to clients’ specific
requirements. It is difficult to find this
level of trust when it comes to meeting
the deliverables.”
Since the ICT company’s appointment,
Datacentrix has positioned itself as a
trusted advisor to DNI, having successfully
implemented the new environment, which
includes servers, networking equipment, rack
enclosures and connectivity.
“In addition, Datacentrix rolled out a storage
solution that not only caters for our growth
over time, but makes provision for DNI’s
in-house development programme, which
requires a great deal of space,” added
Jacobs. “Our previous system just couldn’t
handle the related queries and loads,
meaning that they had to be run overnight.
Today, these can be resolved in a matter of
minutes, at any time of day.”
The new infrastructure also has a much
smaller footprint, leaving physical space for
expansion over time, and is fully redundant.
“We now have in place the proactive
management structure and it was here that
Datacentrix’ certification levels were critical,”
said Jacobs. “I’m pleased to advise that there
has been no downtime since the rollout – even
during migration, where our users were live
on the system. It was a seamless process with
no disruption at all; in fact, the only feedback
from our staff was around the improved
performance of the new infrastructure.”
These gains have been particularly prevalent
within the new storage environment – with
huge space savings.
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