How IGATE used network virtualization to cut network administration costs by 35%

With offices in multiple locations, IGATE, a leading IT services provider, was looking to build a private cloud to deliver complete application environment on top of its existing infrastructure, and provide automation and management capabilities to support software development lifecycles.
As the firm already had an experience in using VMware solutions, it decided to base its cloud infrastructure on the VMware cloud suite. The goal was to use this foundation to deliver its clients Infrastructure-as-a-Service consisting of compute, storage, and networking resources. Besides automation capabilities, the cloud infrastructure has helped IGATE to accelerate the delivery of new products and services to the market and also provide an environment for customers to view proof of concept and testing.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
VMware’s vCloud suite has enabled IGATE to adopt a self-service model where its developers can provision their own infrastructure resources, while administrators retain the ability to control the overall capacity utilization and predict what capacity will be required in future. Self-service is enabling the business to greatly speed its time to market. Rather than waiting for weeks or months for IT to make server resources available, a developer can access a virtual machine and become productive in minutes.

On the management side, IGATE now operates a single console that enables it to automate the end-to-end delivery of resources, move workloads between different platforms and technologies, and allocate resources to users as necessary. IGATE has also chosen to deploy VMware NSX, the network virtualization platform for the software-defined datacenter to transform the economics of network and security operations. Just like server virtualization, network virtualization allows network traffic to be abstracted from the switches and routers within the network. IGATE network administrators can configure the network visually to suit dynamic business and application needs. More importantly, multiple physical networks can be combined into a large logical network which can be centrally managed.

THE BUSINESS BENEFITS
“Due to the deployment of the network virtualization solution from VMware, we have been able to reduce time to access infrastructure resources from weeks to minutes, and boost our network security, and cut network administration costs by an estimated 35%,” says Vijay Kumar Srivastava, Associate Director, IMS, IGATE. The network virtualization solution has improved productivity as network administrators can configure all network components (switches, routers) from a single console, with complete visibility into all network connections and services.

The solution reduces both the effort and time to provision network and security services as administrators do not need to scrutinize each network configuration change to ensure it will not adversely impact delivery of other applications. Network administrators can also use a centralized console to programmatically create, provision, snapshot, delete, and restore complex networks. The network virtualization solution has also helped in reducing the TCO. Automated network provisioning and configuration, and elimination of possible manual errors and downtime has r educed significantly. Further, due to the network virtualization solution, there is no need to invest in separate standalone solutions for many of the networking and security functions that are fundamental to datacenter networking, including distributed routing,
firewalling, and load balancing.

IGATE is also using the VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, which has enabled it to minimize the disaster risk to its business. IGATE has leveraged SRM and vRealize to automate the DR process in just a few clicks and minimal manual intervention.