As a leading energy and services enterprise, ENGIE operates across the UK providing innovative solutions for businesses and communities. From onshore and offshore wind assets to solar farms and biomethane plants, ENGIE supports over 17,000 customers on a mission to decarbonise.
CAE Technology Services Limited is now part of the boxxe Group and we are delighted to welcome you to the boxxe website.
For any queries regarding the acquisition, please read boxxe announces acquisition of CAE Technology Services or contact our Customer Services Team on 0330 236 9429 or via email at letschat@boxxe.com.
For any queries regarding the acquisition, please read boxxe announces acquisition of CAE Technology Services or contact our Customer Services Team on 0330 236 9429 or via email at letschat@boxxe.com.
Results
We delivered Dual Active data centres with ACI, providing ENGIE with the flexibility, agility, and performance they need to execute their ambitious growth plans. Now with WAN connectivity and its new data centre infrastructure in place, any new businesses ENGIE acquires can be integrated easily, with minimal disruption.
Eight data centres consolidated to two
We delivered Dual Active data centres with Cisco ACI to support ambitious growth plans.
Unified business divisions
We successfully interconnected networks and data centres through a WAN aggregation layer with minimal downtime to boost network performance.
Cyber Essentials Plus certification achieved
The new data centre infrastructure enabled Engie to achieve CE+ security certification, allowing them to bid for new contracts that require this standard.
Challenge
ENGIE was restructuring its UK operation, bringing three business divisions together with a newly-acquired company. This presented several IT challenges over how to consolidate legacy data centres into a secure, highly available and automated new environment, aggregate disparate wide area networks (WANs), and deploy data centre interconnects. ENGIE also wanted Cyber Essentials Plus security certification for its data centres so it could bid for new contracts that require CE+.
The network team faced tight deadlines and couldn’t risk any major downtime, so ENGIE turned to boxxe Group to find a way to achieve its goals — and beyond.
Plan
The network team needed to unite business divisions with vastly different data centre strategies – ultimately consolidating eight data centres into two in-house locations. The solution had to allow for expansion, complete flexibility in application deployment, full automation capabilities, and no restrictions on physical location.
We decided to deploy Cisco's Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) as it would provide ENGIE with more advantages than a classic data centre approach – offering greater business agility through network optimisation, security, and cloud enablement.
Approach
We created an ACI 'greenfield' build and then migrated the data centres successfully. The solution delivered dual active data centres with no single point of failure. We also interconnected networks and data centres through a WAN aggregation layer. In effect, this created a small service provider MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) network for internal use. We connected each WAN successfully with minimal downtime – not a single WAN change was reversed.
Outcome
ENGIE now benefits from WAN connectivity and data centre infrastructure to support its growth. Network bottlenecks have been removed. Performance gains have been felt across the company. New businesses can be integrated easily. Data centres can be located anywhere they choose. And thanks to its Cyber Essentials Plus security certification ENGIE can bid for new projects and seek repeat business to support their ambitious growth plans.
It's universally agreed that this was one of our most successful projects of the year. Downtime was minimal and not a single WAN change was reversed, boxxe Group got it right the first time. The smoothness of the transition was amazing, thanks to the technical expertise and planning.
Chris Tyler
Network Manager
ENGIE UK
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