VMWARE CASE STUDY

Liquid Capital harnesses virtualization as key

to innovation

In its charge to embrace tomorrow’s technology as a means

ABOUT LIQUIDCAPITAL
LiquidCapital is a one-stop-
shop for the motor industry,
providing a comprehensive
offering of financial products
and related services. The
company is a registered
Financial Services Provider
(FSP 6210) and is currently
one of the largest providers
of end-to-end white labelled
branded financial services
solutions to the motor industry
and provides a range of motor
financial services products for
over 12 international motor
brands represented in South
Africa.
BENEFITS
• 100% virtualized
• Went from 24 to 6 physical
servers
• Enabled team to rebuild
large chunks of its systems
• Virtualized entire SQL
environment
• A consolidated view of all IT
systems
• The ability to develop and
roll out new applications
immediately
• No longer a “hardware
dependant” business
VMWARE PRODUCT STACK
• vSphere
• vCenter Operations Manager
• Site Recovery Manager
to improve its customer’s experience, South African financial
service provider to the motoring industry Liquid Capital,
has made a significant investment in virtualizing its entire IT
environment.
The company’s key vision is to change the way its customers do business and how it
engages with its clients, through innovative technologies, products and services, which
it refers to as “tomorrow’s technologies”.
“The success of our business is hinged on
our ability to deliver superior solutions
to customers that embrace the way they
want to work with us and that are ahead
of what our competitors are bringing
to market,” says Billy van Zyl, general
manager IT at Liquid Capital.
“Every technology investment we make
and every project we undergo needs
to support this vision. It is with this that
we identified a need to automate and
mobilise our development environment
while at the same time position ourselves
to tap into cloud-based services if we
have the need. One such way we could
do this, was by virtualizing all of the
infrastructure components of our IT
department.”
While seemingly a small ask, the task was
to touch on mission critical areas of the
business such as its mission critical SQL
environment. Undeterred by warnings
from industry players, Van Zyl and his
team confidently and without doubt set
out to select partners and technologies to
help it reach their goal.
The virtual journey
“The saying goes that fortune favours
the brave and I had come from an
environment that was 100% virtualized
so had no doubt it could work and that
we could do it, while at the same time
meeting our desire to begin making use
of technologies that could meet our
innovation and development goals,” he
says.
While the Liquid Capital IT team owned
the project, it also partnered with
technology partner Ubuntu and selected
VMware as its technology of choice for its
business.
The company is currently a wall-to-wall
Microsoft house all of which needed to
be virtualized. This also included its CRM
platform as well as its in-house developed
sales systems, its Cardinal insurance
system, its home-grown competitive
analysis tools as well as a series of its own
mobile applications for customers and
sales people, to name a few.
A data explosion
The entire process lasted a record eight
months, dramatically quicker than what
had been anticipated, and after their hard
work, van Zyl and his Liquid Capital IT
team were able to literally and figuratively
switch off the old and switch on the
new. However, what happened next
completely caught the IT team off guard
as the company suddenly experienced a
data explosion where it went from about
6 TB of SAN usage to a whopping 30 TB.
“At first we thought something was
wrong, but further analysis showed that
the system we had deployed had become
so easy to use and so efficient that it
was less a data explosion, and more a
development explosion. Which is exactly
the innovation we were aiming for!
“Different development projects were
being run simultaneously, new projects
were being queued and the development
VMWARE CASE STUDY
“You have to be brave, you have
to have a business strategy
and you must show results
immediately as you build
things for the future. If you
need an effective disaster
recovery solution it is simply
a no brainer, you have to
virtualize. It’s the catalyst for
the future and without it you
won’t be able to get to the
cloud.”
Billy van Zyl,
General Manager IT, Liquid Capital
team leapt at the benefits of this new and are able to develop and roll out
virtual environment. The appetite for applications and new products even
innovation we knew existed in the faster than in the past. An example
business was suddenly being met and we of which is the company’s new online
were able to feed it,” states van Zyl. quoting tool. The costs of development
have also come down dramatically as the
While from a capacity point of view the
need to scope and roll out new hardware
number of VMware hosts being run was
has been almost entirely negated and the
fine, the SAN explosion was at first a
physical hardware footprint has come
cause for concern as it seemed the IT
down from 24 to 6.
team were filling it up as soon as it was
being put in. “We had to pull things back According to van Zyl the team saw some
and be more disciplined, just because you immediate hard benefits with Operations
can now back up your entire laptop to the Manager as it completely took what
server doesn’t mean you should. vendors said their tech could do and put
that on its head. As an example it was
“So we used it as an opportunity to
told by Microsoft certain tech had to be
create a more responsible IT consumption
run on 24 processors, while VMware said
culture in the business. It also allowed us
it didn’t. No stranger to taking calculated
to better our existing control, compliance,
risks the LiquidCapital team jumped
version control and audit trails so we
straight in and has as a result been able
could report back to the business on
to, in places, reduce the processing
these more effectively.
footprint of the Microsoft technology by
“Ultimately the project was a lot less more than half, the savings of which are
about virtualizing the environment than huge.
it was about ensuring that LiquidCapital
Through its hunger for innovation the
makes use of tomorrows technologies
Liquid Capital IT environment has gone
today. Virtualization isn’t new and the
from a room full of servers to just a few
benefits speak for themselves, but we
racks, and its IT teams can manage and
had to get to that step before we could
view all hardware and software from a
accelerate to the next. We need to
centralised management environment. In
understand our systems, consolidate our
addition it is also making use of remote
IT environment, realise cost savings, all so
support services, which has helped it
that we could further invest in innovation
reduce the costs of having to employ
and create a disaster resilient business,”
more people.
he adds.
Key to success
Immediate benefit
“You have to be brave, you have to have
While many companies often wait to
a business strategy and you must show
realise the benefits of such an investment,
results immediately as you build things
the LiquidCapital team didn’t have
for the future. If you need an effective
to wait long, as not a month after
disaster recovery solution it is simply a
implementation disaster struck in the
no brainer, you have to virtualize. It’s the
way of a fire on a Sunday afternoon. Van
catalyst for the future and without it you
Zyl says the team was forced to declare a
won’t be able to get to the cloud.
disaster.
“Also don’t tinker with it unless you have
“The beauty was that we were already
to, the technology has a job to do and
running our now virtualized development
it knows how to do that without human
site off site, so all we needed was to get
intervention. Looking ahead I think it has
connectivity between the two sites and
definitely paved the way for us to start
we were up and running on the Monday
looking at a hybrid cloud environment for
morning, in fact some staff were none the
the development team to work in,” ends
wiser as they experienced no disruption.
van Zyl.
Prior to having the VMware solution
in place this simply would not have
happened,” says van Zyl.
Other key benefits have been that the
development team have flourished
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may be trademarks of their respective companies. Item No: 14Q4 Liquid Capital UK