Featured content from our partner, Lenovo.
Background
Aller Media is the leading publisher of magazines and newspapers in the Nordic region, with a weekly circulation of 3.2 million. As one of the most innovative media companies in the region, Aller manages a wide array of print and digital properties. The company operates in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
Today, all Aller magazines and newspapers are available online and on social media platforms. Its newsstand app, Pling, is available on desktop, tablet, and smartphone, and gives subscribers unlimited access to Nordic magazines and newspapers as well as more than 1,000 international titles.
Challenge
Today’s media consumers expect instant access to digital content, and organizations must deliver on these demands—or risk losing readers. Aller has long been at the forefront of the digital transformation of the media industry.
Hampus Nordanfjäll, Team Lead, IT Operations at Aller Media, confirms: “We were early adopters of digital, a move that has paid off. In some areas, we now earn more revenue from digital content than we do from print.”
As demand for digital content continues to grow, so does pressure on IT systems. To continue delivering high-quality services, Aller looked to upgrade its data center architecture to a new, high-performance infrastructure, and enlisted trusted technology partner CTGlobal to support the refresh.
The Lenovo ThinkAgile MX platform is a complete, all-in-one solution. The Azure Stack HCI software comes pre-integrated and pre-tested, so installation is quick and easy, and you can hit the ground running.” —Hampus Nordanfjäll, Team Lead, IT Operations, Aller Media
Teaming Up with the Experts
For several years, Aller operated a hybrid cloud environment based on on-premises data center solutions and Microsoft Azure. Many of Aller’s most critical workloads, such as its content management and subscription management systems, run on-premises, with other applications and data backups in the cloud.
“Our on-premises infrastructure no longer delivered the high level of performance required to run core workloads effectively, or the capacity to support our projected data growth,” says Nordanfjäll.
CTGlobal, a Lenovo Gold Partner and ThinkAgile and Storage Expert Partner, identified the Lenovo ThinkAgile MX platform as the ideal solution: a modern, high-performance hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution that integrates seamlessly with Azure services.
CTGlobal implemented the ThinkAgile MX platform in a highly structured manner, using effective automated tools. We were very impressed by the team’s technical skills and expertise, and their transparency throughout the process. This combination made for a stress-free implementation, as we had total confidence in the CTGlobal team.” —Hampus Nordanfjäll, Team Lead, IT Operations, Aller Media
Why Lenovo? High-Performance HCI with Hybrid Capabilities
CTGlobal implemented five all-flash Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Nodes at Aller’s data center, configured as a single software-defined cluster with the Azure Stack HCI operating system and Hyper-V virtualization.
Equipped with 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and Intel® Optane™ P4800X Performance NVMe PCIe SSDs, the ThinkAgile MX platform delivers high throughput, low latency, and turbocharged performance.
With the Lenovo XClarity Integrator and Windows Admin Center tools, Aller benefits from a smooth management experience across the physical infrastructure, virtualized compute and storage resources, and Azure cloud services.
Lenovo ThinkAgile MX delivers the best of both worlds: the flexibility and scalability of the cloud, and the security and control of on-premises infrastructure, all in one box. —Hampus Nordanfjäll, team lead, IT Operations, Aller Media
Results
Aller is currently working with CTGlobal to migrate its core systems to the Lenovo ThinkAgile MX platform. The company will run around 400 virtual machines on-premises and continue utilizing cloud in a hybrid manner.
“Once the migration is completed, we are expecting to see a significant increase in performance for on-premises workloads,” says Nordanfjäll. “Right now, we are limited by performance constraints, with some jobs taking days to complete. We anticipate a dramatic reduction in execution times with the ThinkAgile MX platform. The Azure Stack HCI delivers a high-performance, low-latency network communication platform which, in combination with Intel® Optane™ SSDs, enables high throughput and short response times.”
CTGlobal provides ongoing support and consulting services, taking care of everything from firmware updates to software licensing. CTGlobal is one of our most important and most valued partners.” —Hampus Nordanfjäll, Team Lead, IT Operations, Aller Media
By making the switch to the Lenovo ThinkAgile MX platform, Aller has future-proofed its IT, ensuring it can continue to create and publish high-quality digital content to satisfy ever-growing consumer demand.
- Significant performance increase expected
- Simple, single-pane-of-glass management
- Easy scalability with HCI and cloud integration
More and more people are choosing digital over print media, and we must adapt to meet this demand. With the Lenovo ThinkAgile MX platform, we have a flexible, future-proof foundation on which to build out our digital offering.” —Hampus Nordanfjäll, Team Lead, IT Operations, Aller Media