Case Study: Australian Institute of Management

The Customer

The Australian Institute of Management (AIM) NSW and ACT chapter has been around for 70 years, with the goal to develop better managers and leaders for a better society. “Better” is a key term for AIM and all initiatives are based around this concept. AIM is a not-for-profit entity devoted to leadership excellence through education and learning for commerce, industry and government. AIM has 6,500 individual and 800 major corporate members, employing 95 staff across two locations in NSW and ACT.

The Challenge

The NSW and ACT chapters of AIM were undertaking a technology transformation, to ensure it remained relevant to the industry and its members. The plan was to replace its seven-year-old legacy infrastructure by investing heavily in new technology that could be leveraged to transform the organisation. The foundation of this transformation was built using virtualisation to go from 40 physical servers to three, moving business applications such as CRM, finance and operations to the cloud, and implementing 120 virtual desktops.

In order to achieve this, AIM required a shared storage solution that was designed to work in a virtualised environment and provide a smart solution for reliable backup and secure disaster recovery. To meet this challenge and to remain relevant in a highly competitive marketplace, AIM needed to identify a data storage solution that fit its goal of being “better”.

The Solution

AIM’s technology partner in the transformation process was Sydney-based reseller Nexus. Dana Teahan, Chief Information and Digital Officer at AIM, said, “In the process of assessing the well-known storage vendors, we didn’t find anything we felt was really innovative or new. Nexus suggested we meet with Nimble Storage, a company we hadn’t heard a lot about, but we were willing to give it a try, based on the strong recommendation and the fact we’re willing to take a risk to be outstanding.”

“We were quickly impressed not just with the Nimble Storage hardware and the technology behind it, but the support and services that came with the solution were unlike anything we’d ever seen from a vendor—particularly in the storage space.”

The Decision to Buy Nimble Storage

“The traditional storage industry heavyweights were laden with unnecessary process and procedure, which goes against our transformation goals because we felt they were based on dated technologies. We also rarely got to meet anyone from the vendors themselves. With Nimble Storage and Nexus, it was refreshing to be working with like-minded people who care about innovation and value. We had the Nimble team onsite regularly, and it was great to be working directly with a team and a new company, delivering an amazing product,” said Teahan.

Business Benefits

BAIM is experiencing substantial business benefits since moving to the Nimble Storage environment. Teahan said, “The Nimble units store all of our critical business data, which is continually growing. The scalability of the Nimble platform is a significant benefit we gain, and was a massive consideration in our choice. Scaling is fast and simple. We also gained 40-50 percent additional space from data compression when we moved to Nimble, so we now have plenty of space.”

“The great thing about Nimble is it was up and running straight out of the box and there’s no massive infrastructure required to go around it. We’ve reduced a full rack of storage down to just 6RU, so we’re using less than a quarter of a rack for twice the storage space. And the power savings are dramatic.”

“Because we’ve also moved many of our business applications to the public cloud, we need to be comfortable and certain in the ability to copy out that data and store it locally and securely. For example, we use Salesforce as our CRM. If Salesforce goes down, we now have reliable, available back-up and disaster recovery, and immediate access to all the current data. Our Nimble Storage solution gives us this peace of mind.”

AIM NSW and ACT are in the process of merging with AIM Queensland and NT, as well as moving to new premises. As part of the move, all classrooms will be fitted out with leading-edge technology such as electronic whiteboards, interactive screens, immediate playback, and other features to allow for high-performance curriculum delivery.

“We expect the new technologies we offer our members and educators to be taken up with vigour. That, combined with our merging with AIM Queensland & NT, will create a jump in data storage requirements, but the scalability of the Nimble solution means we don’t have to worry.”

AIM was also pleased with the cost of the Nimble Storage solution. Teahan said, “Nimble allowed us to achieve a 30 percent cost saving compared to other vendors. This was due to its architectural approach that achieves higher performance and more capacity on less physical hardware. On top of that, other vendors required us to purchase the physical storage unit, then pay separately for software licenses. Nimble wraps it all into one solution and price, including the software and support.”

AIM was one of a group of companies around the world who participated in a beta trial of Nimble Storage’s new, unique InfoSight cloud-based services solution. InfoSight monitors customer systems 24 x 7 and provides live dashboards that can be used for reporting as well as capacity and system planning purposes. The Nimble support team, in 80 percent of cases, can use this information to identify a potential issue at the same time or earlier than the customer. This means the Nimble Storage team can start working on a solution to a problem before the customer even has to worry about it.

“At the end of the day, we’re here for our members. From us, they want to learn, and they want to know that we’re looking after their data. Our technology transformation and new premises will mean they can learn better than ever before, and will have the tools and resources to enjoy the experience. We’re educating the next generation of managers and they want immediate access to content and the very latest teaching methodologies. Nimble underpins that. The solution delivered us better performance, set-up, design, support and value,” concluded Teahan.