SHI UK works with Nasuni to help global advertising agency fix file sharing problems

A global advertising, public relations, and marketing agency, headquartered in Hong Kong and spread throughout dozens of offices on five continents, had successfully communicated internally for decades. That is, until a technical issue began causing difficulties with its European file-sharing process.

The company was running a four-year-old on-premises storage solution for several of its old continent offices. This prohibited it from working on large files simultaneously.

With maintenance and support – which had also become prohibitively expensive – expiring in just a few weeks, the agency was desperately looking for a newer, better solution.

Examining every option

The agency entrusted SHI’s UK office, which serves as the hub of sales and operations for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), with figuring out a solution.

But it came with a catch: SHI had three months to discover, design, and implement a solution that not only fixed the customer’s file-sharing woes, but also adhered to its global security policy.

The agency was initially looking at a like-for-like solution with another vendor that was still on-premises. However, the agency needed multi-site file-sharing that could easily scale and had transparent future costs around it.

SHI considered both on- and off-premises options, but quickly discovered that many of the on-premises products did not offer the global file sharing capabilities the customer required.

There was one solution that would be perfect for the job – but it would require the agency to step out of its comfort zone.

A disruptive solution built for collaboration and scalability

SHI believed the Nasuni platform was perfect for the job. The agency, however, was a bit hesitant.

It was used to doing business a certain way, using traditional on-premises file infrastructure. The agency was open to change, but this would be a big step. SHI took the time to address each and every concern.

SHI pointed out the solution’s collaboration capabilities, how it would cut back on the need for lots of local backups, reduce complexity, and scale with the rest of the agency’s European and potentially even global locations.

Ultimately, the ad agency liked what it heard, put its trust in SHI, and took a leap of faith.

SHI UK worked closely with the Nasuni technical team to address each individual issue, for a comprehensive, custom-built solution that included both cloud storage and the hardware to support it. After a 30-day proof of concept (POC) and a workshop educating the customer’s EU IT managers on the new components, the customer proceeded with the implementation of the following solution:

• Nasuni Cloud Storage Platform on AWS – 160TB
• Nine DL380 10TB servers with 24×7 Support for four years
• Microsoft licensing for the servers and 1,000 users

Meeting the needs and planning for the future

SHI’s solution offered the agency much needed multi-site file-sharing, decreased its reliance on local backups, reduced the complexity of its environment, and provided scalability for future growth.

In addition, the nine-month-long project contributed to better collaboration between regional office managers and helped drive a more centralized approach within the business.

SHI UK is now working on phase 2 of the project, which includes VMware backup and recovery and Veritas security, and will be executed globally.