Leading VC Firm Keeps Citrix XenApp, Microsoft Exchange and BlackBerry Enterprise Server "Always On" with Marathon Technologies
THE COMPANY
Argo Global Capital is a leading venture capital firm focused on supporting a new generation of entrepreneurs in the wireless and internet industries. The firm's unique relationship with telecommunications operators and industry partners on four continents provides the relationships and knowledge that add real value and increase the odds of their portfolio companies achieving their goals. Argo is based in Wakefield, Massachusetts, with offices in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Canada and partners in Europe, Asia, North America and South America.
THE SITUATION
To maintain a competitive advantage and support its users, Argo takes a proactive approach to managing their technology infrastructure. In 2008, the company foresaw limitations with its existing data center. At the time, all of the company's critical applications (including Citrix® XenAppTM, Microsoft® Exchange and BlackBerry® Enterprise Server) were running on ten physical servers late in their lifecycle. To proactively prevent any downtime or issues in its data center, Argo turned to technology firm and trusted partner, Integrated IT Solutions.
Rather than investing in the replacement of each physical server, Jay Patterson, Director of Sales at Integrated IT Solutions, recognized an opportunity to help Argo simplify its data center, consolidate hardware and reduce operating costs with server virtualization. "For the same investment it would have taken to replace their physical servers, we were able to utilize server virtualization in combination with Marathon's everRun software to provide Argo with better reliability, scalability and continuous availability," Patterson explained
"Our global partners and clients are 'always on' making it critical that our executives have 24x7 access to email and mobile services," said Kathy Calisi, VP of Administration at Argo. "In updating our data center, it was important that it that could ensure our critical Exchange and Blackberry Enterprise Server applications would also be 'always on'."
"Given Argo's projected roadmap, scalability was critical in the development of its data center. By converting from physical to virtual servers, the new infrastructure would allow the IT team the ease of simply pointing and clicking the new applications they want to add to the servers. Previously, if they wanted to add a new accounting program or any other applications, they would need to invest in another physical server," added Patterson.
THE SOLUTION
For the updated data center, Integrated IT Solutions recommended the Citrix XenServerTM, virtualization platform and Marathon everRun® automated high availability software. Marathon's everRun delivers reliable protection for critical virtual workloads by providing redundant virtual machines and synchronized mirroring of the entire system including network, applications and data. The integration of Citrix XenServer's "bare-metal" performance and the everRun unique software fault tolerant architecture provides companies like Argo Global Capital with the security to run business critical and other high-value applications in virtual environments.
"When we were presented with the full set of capabilities that would be provided through the integration of XenServer and everRun we thought that they were too good to be true. But the deployment was simple and we've been up and running flawlessly for more than six months," added Calisi from Argo.
THE RESULTS
Since implementing XenServer with everRun, Argo has had zero downtime, even during a significant hardware failure. "One of the servers was unavailable because of a NIC failure, but thanks to everRun we never experienced a disruption in service," commented Calisi.
More than 90 percent of Argo's data center is virtualized, including the applications Argo considers mission critical - Citrix XenApp, Microsoft Exchange and BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on more hardware, the company was able to reduce its hardware footprint while increasing its reliability, scalability and availability of their data center with the help of Citrix XenServer and Marathon everRun.
Calisi closed by saying, "For essentially the same investment as it would have taken to update all our physical servers, adopting server virtualization technology has allowed us to improve the efficiency of our data center and create a more robust and flexible IT infrastructure."
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