Business Driver

Driven by parent company objectives for cost containment, global asset management, and enterprise security as part of a global infrastructure shared services initiative, our Client, a large property and casualty insurer, wanted to consolidate their nine data centers into two to reduce the overall data center footprint, retire toxic legacy software and assets, close existing gaps in core system functionality, and transition to a new mode of operations, including a new IT Operating Model.  The CIO asked Trexin to help him lead this extensive effort and engage across several operating entities.

Approach

To jumpstart the project, the Trexin team drafted a conceptual roadmap and data center consolidation methodology to present at the project kickoff to serve as an initial high-level strategy that could be quickly and frequently refined.  Coordinating the efforts of multiple entities including internal teams, other operating entities, and external vendors (notably including a prominent 3rd-party vendor that provided IT support and services), an aligned, high-level strategy and roadmap soon emerged.

The consensus opinion was to adopt a “big bang” data center migration approach that leveraged virtualization and allowed the team to follow the defined technical architecture strategy, including application dependency mapping and blueprinting as well as the implementation of the infrastructure transition model.  To most effectively manage this approach across the numerous teams and corporate entities, a cross-functional command center was also established to handle the complexity of the cutover events.

The individual tasks for the 3rd-party IT service vendor who bore primary responsibility for the IT-driven solution needed to successfully cutover to the new data center had to be managed extremely carefully and required meticulous coordination.  To address this need, Trexin developed day-by-day and hour-by-hour cutover plans that outlined roll-back scenarios, dependencies, contingencies, and crucial go/no-go decision points.  Our team also helped orchestrate paper walk-throughs and dry runs in isolated environments to mitigate risk and drive implementation strategies designed to reduce business disruption as much as possible.

Results

Trexin provided our Client with a tested and proven data center consolidation methodology that not only guided them through their current migration, but also can be used as a foundation for future migrations. The client achieved a 98% application checkout success rate on Day 1 following cutover and 100% compliance to all project audit standards across the company.  Fully documenting the process, we also hosted a post-cutover meeting to review the results and highlight the primary lessons learned. With the consolidation complete and the process materials recorded, our Client was able to meet their financial goals and achieve all key business objectives.