A new IT infrastructure in four months. SWAN shows how it's done.

Customer profile

A Windows 10 rollout, simplified client management and proactive monitoring of the central systems – these were the main requirements that SWAN Analytische Instrumente AG set for its renewed IT infrastructure solution.

As one of the world's leading manufacturers of analytical instruments, SWAN employs around 100 people in Switzerland and more than 200 around the globe. Research and development, as well as the complete manufacturing of its products, are concentrated at the company's headquarters in Hinwil, where critical components such as sensors are still produced today.

{{Referenz (/swan) | Michael Rudolf}}

Thanks to the professional client engineering and the in-depth SCCM know-how of the Baggenstos team, we were able to carry out the introduction of Windows 10 quickly and efficiently.»

Facts and figures

Starting position and objectives

The IT infrastructure previously in use, along with the clients running the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, no longer met the increased requirements in terms of system availability, performance and usability, and therefore had to be replaced.

At the customer's request, the replacement was also intended to simplify client management and improve the monitoring of the central systems. Based on this starting position, the IT specialists at Baggenstos were given the following tasks:

1.) Replacement of the central storage systems
2.) Replacement of the virtualisation hosts
3.) Rollout of Windows 10
4.) Monitoring of the central systems with Managed Services

Solution

These objectives were achieved within a four-month project carried out in four individual steps: the first phase involved replacing the central infrastructure with a state-of-the-art storage system. For this purpose, the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 server with 3Par storage was used, along with three new ESX host systems based on VMware 6.0. To prepare for the Windows 10 rollout, the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM 2012, R2 Windows 10 Pro) was introduced in a second step.

This phase included the engineering of the new client to make full use of all the capabilities of Windows 10 and Office 365, as well as defining the future software distribution and client management. Once this work was completed, responsibility was handed over to SWAN's IT department, which then independently carried out the rollout of the 130 new user endpoints running Windows 10 Pro and Office 365 ProPlus (CSP).

To ensure reliable system monitoring at a fixed price, the Baggenstos Event Management Service (EMS), based on the System Center Operations Manager (SCOM 2012, R2), was introduced in a third step. In the fourth and final phase, the 3Par system was expanded with SSD hard disks so that it will continue to meet the performance requirements of SWAN's new ERP solution without compromise in the future.

Results

The high level of client standardisation and the optimised client build result in significantly lower support effort. The new solution is also valued for its high availability and maximum security, ensured by the permanent monitoring of the central infrastructure with SCOM.

Challenges

Extensive work (replacement, rollout and monitoring) had to be completed in just four months.

Managed Service as a foundation for future success

The systematic, proactive monitoring of the IT infrastructure is carried out with our Event Management Service (EMS). This achieves maximum availability and data security. The systems' monitoring data is monitored 24/7, qualified by our operations specialists and handled according to defined SLAs.

Many thanks for the excellent collaboration

We are delighted that we were able to implement the project successfully in the planned individual steps and thereby make our contribution to providing a new IT infrastructure solution.