To enable it to take on additional real estate projects and open new lines of business, Australian property group Deluca used Lenovo TruScale Infrastructure as a Service to deploy a hyperconverged infrastructure solution – creating headroom for growth while cutting costs by 15%.
The Challenge
Deluca is an integrated property group with over 30 years of experience in construction, development, and property management. The Australian company specialises in creating impactful projects across various sectors, including commercial, industrial, retail, large format retail, fast food, fuel, bulky goods, residential, childcare and fitouts.
As Deluca expands its portfolio, internal demand for data-driven services is rising sharply. Andrew Delaney, IT Manager, Deluca, explains: “Our teams are working around the clock to get new projects off the ground. Our business process is heavily data driven and we rely on specialist applications to support design, estimating and feasibility studies, among others.”
With its existing on-premises IT estate approaching end-of-life, Deluca looked for a future-ready solution. Delaney said: “Our previous data centre was in a flood-prone area, so we decided to take the opportunity to refresh and relocate. The aim was to deploy scalable, high-performance hardware in a secure co-location site.”
“When we started exploring the capabilities of hyperconverged infrastructure [HCI], we realised that it would be an excellent fit for our scalability objectives. We decided to replace our three-tier architecture with a modern HCI solution.”
The Solution
Working closely with its trusted technology partner Truis, Deluca selected an HCI solution from Lenovo and Nutanix. Based on Lenovo ThinkAgile HX1331 Certified Nodes with Nutanix Cloud Platform, the new solution is delivered via Lenovo TruScale Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – enabling Deluca to get high performance without a costly capital purchase.
“Aside from being extremely cost-efficient, TruScale IaaS gives us the peace of mind that Lenovo is monitoring our solution 24/7,” said Delaney.
“We also greatly value the fact that Lenovo supports the entire lifecycle, as data sovereignty and security are very important for us. At the end of the five-year service agreement, we can migrate to brand-new hardware and securely dispose of the data on the previous hardware using Lenovo Asset Recovery Services.”
Working with Lenovo and Nutanix, Deluca rapidly and seamlessly migrated to the new HCI solution. Today, the company runs its core applications at a new co-location data centre, monitored remotely by Lenovo.
“Deploying the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX1331 Certified Nodes was very straightforward,” said Delaney.
“Using Nutanix Move, migrating our data was simple and seamless – and we were so confident in the new platform that we cut over to the new solution on a Monday evening. Everything went very smoothly and the support we received from Lenovo throughout the process was outstanding.”
“We count ourselves fortunate to have three exceptionally strong partners: Lenovo, Nutanix and Truis. Whenever we have a question, we know the help we need is always close at hand.”
The Results
By shifting to a highly performant and scalable HCI solution with Lenovo TruScale IaaS, Deluca is laying the foundations for fast-paced future growth. “Practically overnight, we boosted the performance of our key applications by 25% – and we’ve sized our environment to support three-fold business growth over the next five years,” said Delaney.
“At the same time, our Lenovo XClarity and Nutanix Prism management tools are reducing our workload by 10% – which gives us time back to focus on supporting our end users.”
Equipped with ultra-responsive applications, teams across Deluca can drive new projects more effectively. Delaney said: “Our estimating, finance, and property development teams run at a higher level of efficiency because of the boost in application performance. Ultimately, our Lenovo and Nutanix solution will help us get projects to the build stage faster.”
At the same time, Lenovo TruScale IaaS has eliminated the need to replace aging equipment with costly capital purchases and engage costly external resources for management and maintenance.
Delaney said: “With Lenovo TruScale IaaS, we’re achieving cost-savings of around 15% a year compared to a like-for-like capex solution deployed on premises. That’s extremely valuable, because it allows us to redirect investment to areas such as cybersecurity.”
“The combination of Lenovo TruScale IaaS and Nutanix gives us a cutting-edge platform to build our business. For a lean IT team like ours, the low management requirements make my life so much easier.”
Why Lenovo?
Deluca began evaluating Lenovo for its reliable, high-quality hardware and its strong partnership with Nutanix. When the company discovered TruScale IaaS, it was convinced it had found the perfect solution.
“Lenovo TruScale IaaS and Nutanix have fundamentally changed how we approach IT at Deluca, and I see the collaboration lasting for a very long time,” said Delaney.
“Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen quantifiable improvements in application performance and business efficiency – and we can grow to three-times the number of employees we have today without adding any new hardware.”
Deluca, Lenovo and Nutanix – the tech
Services
- Lenovo Asset Recovery Services
- Lenovo TruScale Infrastructure as a Service
Hardware
- Lenovo ThinkAgile HX1331 Certified Nodes
Software
- Lenovo XClarity
- Nutanix Cloud Platform
- Nutanix Move
- Nutanix Prism
Deluca, Lenovo and Nutanix – the results
- 25% boost in application performance
- 15% reduction in operational costs
- 10% time saving on infrastructure management
