Bringing transparency to cloud services in Europe.
How Jolera used Lenovo ThinkSystem storage and servers, powered by 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, to drive its expansion in Europe by delivering enterprise-class cloud services.
Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions
for The Data-Centered
Bringing transparency to cloud services in Europe.
How Jolera used Lenovo ThinkSystem storage and servers, powered by 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, to drive its expansion in Europe by delivering enterprise-class cloud services.
Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions
for The Data-Centered
Background
Jolera is a technology hybrid aggregate service provider (HSAP) headquartered in Toronto, serving partners across North America and Europe. From customized technology solutions to cloud and on-premises data migrations, Jolera specializes in end-to-end IT solutions.
Over the last decade, cloud-first and cloud-only strategies have become top of mind for thousands of companies' IT departments. With benefits like rapid provisions, elastic flexibility and high operational cost-efficiency, it’s tough to argue against the managed cloud services model. Jolera recognized the rapid adoption of cloud services at the enterprise level, and they set out to provide those services across Europe in a way that no one had before.
Challenge
As cloud services providers continued to grow and boast a suite of advantages, Jolera realized that something was missing from the European cloud marketplace: transparency in billing models. Due to the variety of variables that go into cloud services, the billing models of leading cloud services providers were flawed. And, unable to obtain accurately calculated fees from providers, businesses often dealt with difficulties in budgeting for IT resources and unexpectedly high monthly costs.
Jolera decided to solve this problem and become the first provider to offer Europe predictably priced cloud services.
One complaint we hear again and again is the fact that some large cloud providers calculate their monthly fees based on wide range of factors, including the number of processors, hours of uptime and amount of usage. Because there are so many variables, monthly costs can be difficult for businesses to predict. We saw a major opportunity to grow our client footprint in Europe by offering enterprise-class services with truly predictable pricing.
A committed partner with the right solution.
To build their new platform, Jolera wanted to be intentional about finding the right partner. They knew they needed someone with robust infrastructure expertise and the ability to provide several high-quality solutions for their platform. Most of all, Jolera wanted a trustworthy partner dedicated to the project’s long-term success.
In the end, that partner was Lenovo.
There were a number of reasons why we selected Lenovo to deliver our new infrastructure platform. Lenovo was one of the few vendors we evaluated who could deliver everything we were looking for in a single contract: including compute, storage and cybersecurity solutions. From the beginning of our request-for-proposals [RFP] exercise, it was clear that Lenovo were experts in infrastructure deployments, which gave us a great deal of confidence.
Bringing the pieces together: simple management and cost-effective storage
As Jolera and Lenovo got started, they had their work cut out for them. To build their new, cost-effective platform, Jolera needed a host of high-quality solutions that resulted in a high-performing, secure, and easily deployable and manageable infrastructure.
To start, Jolera laid the groundwork for their new platform with Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 servers equipped with powerful 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, connected to Lenovo ThinkSystem DM5000H and DE4000H storage arrays. Virtualized with VMware vSphere, the new platform comprised virtual environments running the Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems.
Next, to provide around-the-clock protection for their clients’ sensitive data, Jolera augmented the solution with a disaster recovery environment. This environment runs on Lenovo ThinkSystem SR530 servers, with Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, which provide regular backups to IBM TS4300 tape libraries for long-term data retention. Plus, for an additional layer of protection, the Lenovo YourDrive YourData service helps Jolera retain possession of any failed drives.
To bring it all together, Lenovo and Jolera’s internal IT engineering team deployed the new cloud solution at a large colocation data center in Porto, Portugal. Today, Jolera uses Lenovo XClarity to manage all its compute and storage resources as a single pool, enabling the company to reduce the time, effort and costs required to monitor and manage the infrastructure—meaning a more cost-effective solution for their clients.
The performance, availability and reliability of our Lenovo solutions have been absolutely rock-solid, and we’ve been very impressed by how easy the XClarity solution is to work with. One of our first achievements was boosting the deduplication ratio of our storage solution from 3:1 to 4:1, simply by using the built-in tools in ThinkSystem. Without question, this improvement will help us to contain our storage spend. What’s more, the 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors help ensure the very highest levels of performance for client workloads.
Results
With Lenovo solutions at the heart of their new platform, Jolera is fulfilling its mission of providing Europe with a straightforward cloud proposition: one predictable fee at the end of each month, with no hidden costs. Thanks to their new cloud services model, they’ve continued sprinting ahead in the European cloud services marketplace and continue to onboard companies with up to 7,000 employees.
Jolera is grateful that the Lenovo ThinkSystem platform has never missed a beat, and with growth on the horizon, they know that their Lenovo solutions will continue to scale effortlessly. Martins elaborates, “Over the next three years, we project 25% year-on-year growth in our client base, and that our cloud offering will contribute up to 20% of our total European revenues by the end of 2022. Scaling out to accommodate our future growth couldn’t be simpler; we just plug in a new Lenovo server or storage array, and the resources will be available in less than 15 minutes.”
As the cloud services operation continues to develop in Europe, Jolera is confident that Lenovo will remain by their side as the ideal partner for end-to-end storage, computing, and cybersecurity solutions.
25% year-on-year growth predicted
15 minutes to provision new resources
The close, strategic relationship between Lenovo and Jolera has helped to make our innovative cloud solution an unqualified success. As we continue our business growth across Europe, we look forward to building on our close relationship with Lenovo in the years ahead.
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