Vocus makes 'clean break' from storage and compute vendors with switch to Dell EMC, Nutanix

Vocus Communications has refreshed its infrastructure with Dell EMC XC series appliances running Nutanix's built-in Enterprise Cloud Platform virtualisation solution.

Vocus modernises its infrastructure every four to five years and had a storage area network (SAN) in place, which was reaching end-of-life.

The telco operates 19 data centres, 15 in Australia and three in New Zealand. Vocus posted 403 percent revenue growth revenue to hit $888 million for the half-year ending 31 December. Earnings were up 200 percent to $187 million, and net profit after tax was up 95 percent to $47 million.

Mick Simmons, Vocus' interim head of the company's corporate and wholesale division, said: "Previously we worked with a range of vendors. We had one vendor per function from storage, compute to networks, we have now collapsed the storage and compute using Nutanix on the Dell EMC XC platform.

"The converged solution is reliable, simple and has increased automation, which materially improves our operational efficiency. The incremental node-by-node, pay-as-you-grow capex model also suits us from a budgeting perspective," Simmons added.

Vocus wanted a "clean break" from its three-tier architecture and adopted Nutanix to run its range of business support systems, including large-scale billing and provisioning systems. Benefits include power savings, a reduction in total cost of ownership across IT spend, increased automation and business intelligence.

The telco selected Nutanix Enteprise Cloud Platform because of its maturity, simplicity and open-source KVM technology based hypervisor, Nutanix AHV, which delivered low-touch virtualisation management and associated cost savings, according to Nutanix.

Vocus' IT team developed all orchestration in-house because there was no solution in the market able to handle this task.

After the initial implementation of Nutanix's software, Vocus has already expanded its environment twice as it continuous to migrate its virtualised applications to run more of its business support systems workloads through Nutanix.

The solution provided Vocus with more visibility and resource allocation within the company. Vocus' teams can now "borrow" nodes from different clusters if there is spare capacity.