RACQ keen to get its head in the cloud and start saving
A MAJOR upgrade to its ageing technology will save RACQ about $500,000 as it moves to robot workers and cloud-based data storage.
The 115-year-old organisation said it had already seen benefits from moving its IT to the cloud and the secure cloudcomputing Nutanix platform.
RACQ security and shared ICT services general manager Ben Johnston said he implemented Nutanix alongside IT partner MOQdigital while completing a data-centre migration to a co-location facility.
Mr Johnston said that across its service portfolio, RACQ’s mission was to always provide ultimate benefit to its members.
Despite this ethos, ageing IT infrastructure meant his team had been tied-up in keeping the lights on.
“One of my teams would spend far too much of their time dealing with hardware updates and firmware fixes – now it’s just not an issue,” he said. “We’ve achieved an almost three-fold reduction in our hardware count with Nutanix. We’ve gone from four storage arrays to none, from two datacentres full of racks to around four racks per site, and the people hours we’ve saved in maintaining the environment have been significant.
“With its IT team liberated from the drudge work of hardware maintenance and freed up to explore the possibilities AI, machine learning, robotics, and automation can have on its business, RACQ has set a strong foundation for its future – and the next industry it looks to disrupt.”
Mr Johnston said these efficiency improvements were forecast to save RACQ $500,000 over the next five years while also accelerating its ability to develop new services five-fold.
“Previously, whenever the developers came to my team and needed to provision new infrastructure, we’d target a turnaround of five days – we’re aiming to drop that to just a day,” he said.