Dominion Enterprises With Shared Infrastructure From NetApp, Cisco and VMware

Dominion Enterprises, a marketing services company that provides cloud-based advertising and management software and magazines for multiple industries, recently moved from a siloed infrastructure to a shared IT infrastructure based on NetApp, Inc., Cisco Systems, and VMware technologies.

By using a shared IT infrastructure, Dominion was able to cut out inefficient systems in their data center, reduce costs, and improve the company’s ability to adapt to changing business needs.

With 4,500 employees in 40 states and 5 countries, Dominion hosts thousands of Web sites and 280 magazines that reach over 50 million consumers each month. The company has grown organically as well as through numerous strategic acquisitions, each of which came with its own IT infrastructure. As the company grew, communication and interaction among groups became increasingly cumbersome, inefficient, and costly.

The company’s IT infrastructure was burdened by overprovisioned, underutilized, and nonoptimized resources that, in turn, made it difficult for Dominion to free untapped capacity, react quickly to new opportunities, and streamline coordination among businesses. That’s when Dominion turned to NetApp Star Partner PLANIT Technology Group to design an internal cloud infrastructure based on the FlexPod for VMware reference architecture that would be more flexible and efficient than its existing jumble of disparate systems.

With FlexPod for VMware, Dominion now has the flexibility to scale out and up, easily manage shared services to support its rapid growth, and react to changing needs across all 40 business units. Specifically, Dominion’s FlexPod for VMware solution combines NetApp FAS systems, Cisco Unified Computing System Blade servers and Cisco Nexus switches, and VMware vSphere.

With a shared IT infrastructure, Dominion saved $400,000 in power, cooling, and cabinet costs over two years. With server virtualization, Dominion was able to eliminate more than 300 physical servers. By making IT more flexible and efficient, Dominion has kept administration costs low, managing all 500TB of storage with only 1.5 full-time employees.

Tom Skidmore, chief architect, Dominion Enterprises, said:" Our growth had added so many new systems with a vast array of databases and protocols that it made management much more difficult and a real obstacle to future growth. Now, with our NetApp, Cisco, and VMware shared infrastructure, we can easily provide critical services to our business units and it’s much simpler to provision new resources as needs change and we continue to expand our business."

Chris Cummings, vice president of Product and Solutions Marketing, NetApp, said:" As demand for data and services grows, old IT practices can no longer cope with modern business needs. More and more customers are moving to a shared IT infrastructure to improve their efficiency and flexibility levels. Cisco, VMware, and our other solutions partners help us provide our customers with the tools they need to transform their IT infrastructures, meet their business-critical needs today, and be ready for the needs of the future."

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