Global CIO Highlights 4 Reasons to Consolidate Your IT Infrastructure with a Global File System

Global advertising agency TBWA has 275 offices in 95 different countries. The company has grown through acquisitions, but in onboarding smaller, best-in-class agencies across the world, TBWA also inherited their storage and data protection systems. The result was an incredibly complex IT environment that was difficult to manage, expensive — and failed to deliver what the global agency and its creative end users needed.

In a new webinar, Adam Sharp, CIO, International at TBWA, explains how his group found a way to overhaul this environment, highlighting 4 reasons to consolidate your IT infrastructure with a global file system. His team began this overhaul project with these 4 goals in mind:

1. Reduce ongoing costs: Sharp was tired of purchasing storage capacity upfront, only to see the price rapidly drop. At a global level, it made little sense that he even had to buy storage capacity for one office, when another one of TBWA’s sites had excess capacity.
2. Increase operational efficiency: He didn’t want his IT team spending so much time managing storage capacity, backups, and other concerns that weren’t delivering real results to the core business of TBWA.
3. Minimize risk and protect business critical data: Videos, graphics, and creative files needed to be protected, but with previous systems, sites were at risk of going down for days. All of his sites, at all global locations, needed to be able to recover quickly.
4. Future-proof infrastructure: Finally, Sharp didn’t want to have to jump back into the purchasing cycle again in a year or two. He wanted a flexible solution. One that could scale efficiently and cost-effectively and wouldn’t need to be replaced.

Consolidating IT Infrastructure with a Global File System

As Sharp tells it, his team eventually identified, tested, and deployed Nasuni. Today, this global advertising leader has 3 PB with Nasuni and IBM Cloud Storage, and 90 Edge Appliances extending fast file access to more than 70 global sites. For TBWA, Nasuni has delivered:

• A New Model for Operational Efficiency and Cost Reduction: The traditional approach of buying storage hardware capacity upfront, then bolting on backup and other solutions, has been upended by a cloud file services model that is flexible, infinitely scalable, and cost-effective.
• Automation and Consolidation of File Services: Sharp discusses how Nasuni’s approach makes it much simpler to manage a global or regionally distributed IT infrastructure. Siloes are eliminated and previously manual, time-consuming processes are now automatic.
• M&A Support: The Nasuni platform has simplified TBWA’s existing global IT infrastructure, but it will also make future mergers and acquisitions more efficient because Nasuni’s infinitely scalable file system easily integrates new locations and companies with minimal impact on end users. The platform is truly ideal for growing companies.

Unique Insights from a Global CIO

In the webinar, with help from Nasuni RVP Andy Hardy, Sharp also breaks down the value of multi-cloud functionality, how to factor in varying data sovereignty requirements, and the impact of enabling new collaborative workflows.

The webinar offers a valuable look at how a global CIO and his team approached major IT infrastructure challenges at a strategic, international level. Hear the full story by watching on-demand now!