Infuse Technology Opts for HyperGrid Cloud-in-a-Box

HyperGrid, Inc., in hyper-converged Infrastructure-as-a-Service (HCIaaS) solution, has won a contract with Infuse Technology Ltd, a Midlands IT MSP.

The contract will see the deployment of HyperGrid’s HCI and storage solutions to provide greater agility in supporting the organisation’s short and long-term IT development projects whilst reducing its costs and footprint.

Infuse was looking to refresh its storage infrastructure based on an existing SAN which was causing bottlenecks impacting a number of its clients in turn. The MSP decided to build and run its own cloud platform that in turn could be provided to its clients. By offering cloud-as-a-service and IT infrastructure-as-a-service to customers, Infuse Technology required a quick solution to enable it to offer this complete ‘cloud-in-a-box’ solution.

Originally planning on developing a traditional server/SAN environment, it was understood on closer inspection that they needed a system that was scalable and wouldn’t require additional SANs as the company and client’s requirements change. Having taken space within a colocation data centre and looking to free this space within the rack for their client, Infuse discovered HyperGrid.

After Infuse conducted an evaluation programme into the companies to serve its needs, HyperGrid impressed as one of the few that visited its sites to run through its offering, complete with a demonstration unit and put Infuse in touch with several other HyperGrid clients so it could get third-party validation.

To address the challenge, HyperGrid provided a three node hyper-converged infrastructure and three storage expansion modules, migrating Infuse from four racks to a quarter of a rack, as well as providing additional consultancy to the business as a whole, free of charge.

Paul Howard, director, Infuse, said: “The consultants at HyperGrid went above and beyond what we feel we would have got from any other provider and the hands-on assistance we got was exceptional. Infuse Technology is a Hyper-V house, so it was important to us that we found an HCI provider that was compatible with Microsoft. Not having the experience or skills in-house to handle VMware, we didn’t want an HCI provider that would push us down that route. The HyperGrid team supported our Hyper-V decision to enable maximum system compatibility.“

Following the deployment of HyperGrid HCI and storage, Infuse managed to cut its footprint, and this space saving had a knock-on effect in terms of financial savings for both power consumption and carbon emissions when compared with the ageing infrastructure in place beforehand.

Additionally, by staying with Microsoft’s Hyper-V platform there were no extra costs during installation typically associated with VMware. This will continue throughout the system’s lifespan as Hyper-V is free to run, compared with ongoing VMware costs.

“We have seen a big surge in the use of the HCI and storage systems from HyperGrid in the past few months. The increase in speed is substantial and the system has been able to handle it without any problems. The scalability afforded to us thanks to the HyperGrid HCI has allowed us to quickly get clients online and up and running without any delay,” Howard concluded.