KPMG Australia Selects Vblock Infrastructure Platform

Cisco Systems, Inc. announced that KPMG Australia, part of  network of firms providing audit, tax and advisory services, is the first of the ‘Big 4’ accounting firms in Australia to evolve its data centre to a private cloud with a Vblock infrastructure platform that includes solutions from Cisco, EMC Corporation and VMware.

KPMG has long used information technology (IT) to foster business innovation and the Vblock deployment is expected to deliver the firm first-mover advantage. Unifying compute, network, storage access and virtualization resources in a single energy-efficient system will help KPMG to reduce IT infrastructure costs and complexity, provide nearly limitless scalability, and capitalize faster on new business opportunities. The Vblock platform is a platform that blends cloud computing with integrated, consistent enterprise security and compliance, which enables KPMG to meet or exceed all security and regulatory requirements.

"At KPMG it’s essential for us to consistently innovate and lead the next generation of technology internally. Our decision to evolve to Vblock was based on the business outcomes we expect to achieve from our own rollout of highly secure and flexible technologies. This will provide an opportunity to show our clients an industry-leading on-premises cloud-based technology," said Chris Robinson, Chief Information Officer, KPMG.

KPMG will internally deploy the solution so that clients can benefit from its practical experience and ‘lessons learned’ information, particularly in new technology areas such as cloud. The results KPMG aims to achieve by deploying its advisory services on Vblock include delivering multiple cloud-based digital services and generating multiple new revenue streams on a single optimised platform that will allow the organisation to lower its operational costs and carbon footprint.

The selected Vblock infrastructure platform is a completely integrated information technology offering that combines virtualisation, networking, computing, storage, security and management technologies with the expertise of Cisco, EMC and VMware. As a result of this pre-integrated and pre-tested IT infrastructure platform, KPMG’s IT staff can focus on innovation, virtualising applications and delivering services instead of configuring and tuning separate components. By combining the Cisco Unified Computing System, with two EMC Unified Storage NS-960s with automated storage tiering (FAST), and VMware vSphere (all deployed by Dimension Data), KPMG can compress the time needed to provision and deploy new services from months to minutes. This agility allows the organisation to bring new capabilities to market sooner, creating a potential competitive advantage.

Les Williamson, Vice President of Cisco Australia and New Zealand, said: "The innovations occurring in the data centre are transforming the way information and services are consumed and provided in Australia and globally. We are excited that KPMG Australia is taking advantage of this business model shift and teaming with Cisco and our ecosystem of partners to build, deploy and use highly secure cloud services for itself and its clients now and with even greater capability in the future."

David Webster, President of EMC Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia, said: "Vblock’s increased market uptake, as a platform for delivering cloud solutions, has resulted in greater overall IT agility for organisations. This has enabled them to simplify their IT resources, while continually adapting to changing priorities and operational needs. Likewise, KPMG’s adoption of a Vblock solution will realise significant benefits; the flexibility to deploy cloud-based services for its clients, while at the same time reducing KPMG’s operational costs."

Paul Harapin, Managing Director of VMware Australia, said: "We commend KPMG for working with Vmware and our partners for their IT as a Service requirements. As KPMG evolves their business to the cloud, the power of virtualization will enable KPMG to help its clients leverage the business benefits of cloud, and future-proof its systems as the technology landscape continues to rapidly evolve."