Innovating collaboration technology to help people work smarter and live better

The challenge

Growth strategy via M&A requires a consolidated IT solution

Over the years, AVI-SPL utilized a mergers and acquisition (M&A) strategy to grow into the largest audio-video integration company in the world. While highly successful, this approach resulted in multiple, disparate IT environments, many of which lacked the redundancies AVI-SPL needed to support its business-critical applications and protect its operational integrity. The company was also running different backup technologies at each of these geographically remote locations, making it difficult for its IT team to coordinate the backups effectively.

To strengthen its IT strategy and improve its resiliency, AVI-SPL wanted to consolidate its diverse IT environments into a single, leading-edge colocation data center, taking the opportunity to refresh its aging technology and introduce a unified backup solution and a robust disaster recovery (DR) strategy.

The solution

Purpose-built data center combines with BaaS and DRaaS to promote reliability

AVI-SPL chose to partner with Flexential, selecting its purpose-built Charlotte facility to house its production environment. AVI-SPL also relied on the Flexential Professional Services (FPS) team to help design the migration plan and support the implementation process.

To address it multi-faceted needs, AVI-SPL utilizes The Flexential FlexAnywhere® Platform, a highly connected and scalable platform with a full suite of colocation, interconnection, cloud, data protection, and managed and professional services. To achieve the desired availability and resiliency, AVI-SPL employed the FlexAnywhere Solutions Blueprint for “Improving Application Performance and Reliability.” This blueprint offers a redundant architecture and multiple, diverse connections from leading national providers—all backed by a 100% uptime SLA on power, cooling, network, and bandwidth.

To boost its resiliency, AVI-SPL also uses the Flexential disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), a flexible and reliable cloud recovery solution that offers near real-time replication. Flexential experienced DR consultants assessed AVI-SPL’s business-specific demands and designed a recovery plan that meets AVI-SPL’s recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) requirements.

The IT strategy also integrates Flexential Backup as a Service (BaaS). Tailored to meet AVI-SPL’s specific data retention and retrieval needs, this secure, compliant, and accessible cloud-based backup technology offers off-site backup data storage, allowing AVI-SPL to restore its business-critical data on demand.

The results

Reliable, high-performance colocation and DRaaS ensure uninterrupted customer collaborations

As AVI-SPL upgrades its existing technology and consolidates its disparate IT environments to Flexential data centers, the company will experience next-level reliability and performance through a powerful combination of modern, redundant infrastructure, BaaS, and DRaaS. This comprehensive solution will ensure AVI-SPL’s customers have unfaltering access to the collaboration tools they need.  

“When we are fully operating out of Flexential Charlotte, it's going to be day and night from the way we operate today,” said Anthony J. Marino, Senior Director of Infrastructure, Information Technology at AVI-SPL, noting that Flexential will ensure AVI-SPL can weather any disaster.

The singular Flexential environment, combined with the Flexential-managed DR and backup solutions, will also simplify coordination efforts for AVI-SPL’s IT team, allowing it to dedicate more time to enriching the services it offers its customers. The ability to unify numerous sites also helps AVI-SPL’s IT team manage its IT infrastructure and control costs better. The expertise of the Flexential team contributed to cost savings by customizing and streamlining the migration to avoid unnecessary expenditures. The Flexential BaaS solution will further rein in the cost and complexity of managing multiple unsupported backup technologies.

The Flexential value extends beyond its reliability and cost efficacy. With its IT team working remotely or spread out across the globe, AVI-SPL relied on Flexential to deliver a smooth implementation to keep the project on schedule and within its tight timeframe.

“Literally, it was one phone call with the Flexential team. I told them what I need, why I need it, and by when, and they just made it happen,” said Marino. “At the end of the day, this made my life easier. [The implementation] was quick, easy, and efficient, and that is largely due to the cooperation and coordination of the Flexential local data center team.”

Flexential also supported AVI-SPL through some challenges. After pre-ordering and installing next-generation switches from a major technology provider, AVI-SPL learned that the switch provider had not released the software to support the switches—and would not for months. As a result, AVI-SPL had to unrack the existing switches and install another model.

“Flexential understood the time pressure we were under and helped us pack up the switches. When the new switches arrived, they notified us immediately to ensure we didn’t lose any more time,” said Marino. “Throughout our experience, Flexential communication and coordination have been flawless. Flexential always stayed one step ahead of everything I threw at them to keep our deployment on track. The ability to support us through roadblocks provides real value.”

To facilitate the transition to Flexential Charlotte - North, AVI-SPL also leveraged its existing Flexential - Richmond and Tampa - West sites to operate in parallel without additional costs as it set up the new site.

With Flexential, AVI-SPL also attained the scalability necessary to continue its M&A growth strategy. The ability to spin up new hardware or add resources to existing hardware quickly will empower AVI-SPL’s continued growth and its ability to deliver value-added solutions that support today’s hybrid workforce.