Vault Systems. Using IBM NeXtScale to disrupt industry with secure, cost-effective private cloud. Overview. IBM Systems & Technology Case Study

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1 Vault Systems Using IBM NeXtScale to disrupt industry with secure, cost-effective private cloud Overview The need Vault Systems was established in partnership with software provider JN Solutions to build and maintain private cloud infrastructures. It required a secure, scalable, cost-effective platform that supported small and large deployments. The solution Vault Systems implemented the IBM NeXtScale System, building on the OpenStack cloud computing platform to design a private cloud to host clients SaaS applications with high security. The benefit Highly scalable secure cloud infrastructure offers open-source flexibility and military-grade security, all at a low cost of operation, helping Vault Systems keep pricing competitive. Vault Systems is a secure cloud platform provider created in collaboration with JN Solutions, the leading provider of secure software solutions for Australian government data. Vault Systems provides secure, scalable and flexible infrastructure to help government agencies, government contractors/suppliers, and JN Solutions who deliver its core business applications using a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. An Australian government-approved developer of client management and analytics tools, JN Solutions is accredited by the Department of Employment to provide JSA/DES organizations with systems to manage delivery of employment services. Its systems are widely used across Australia s employment services industry, which includes more than 1,000 locations where agencies are helping Australians find work. The flexible design of IBM NeXtScale allows Vault Systems to integrate new technologies as they become available. Other products make you wait months for the platform to catch up with the latest technology. With NeXtScale, once we provision new hardware we re ready to go, says Rupert Taylor-Price, JN Solutions CEO and a Director of Vault Systems.

2 Solution components Hardware IBM NeXtScale System nx360 M4 Intel Xeon processors Software OpenStack open-source cloud computing platform Services IBM Lab Services IBM OpenStack Implementation Services IBM Business Partner The Missing Link Meeting growing demand The company had previously relied on a proprietary solution to run a hosted platform to deliver software to its clients. In line with Australia s strict privacy requirements for companies handling citizens private data, that platform was secured to government and Department of Defense standards. As demand for cloud computing services grew, it became clear to JN Solutions management that it would benefit from leveraging an open, scalable and secure private cloud solution that could costeffectively service large numbers of existing and new customers. JN Solutions partnered with Vault Systems to create a separate company designed to provide a low-cost, high-availability secure cloud infrastructure. This would support existing customers SaaS ambitions and attract new customers looking for robust and highly secure cloud capabilities. As JN Solutions we were hosting our own solutions and had designed the whole environment to government and Department of Defense security standards, says Rupert Taylor-Price, JN Solutions CEO and a Director of Vault Systems. However, we couldn t take on our customers systems under that arrangement. We decided a new approach was needed and quite a different business that would enter the market at a disruptively low price point. 2

3 There is nothing on the market at the moment that offers a faster solution. Rupert Taylor-Price, JN Solutions CEO and a Director of Vault Systems Cost-effective, scalable SaaS Vault Systems evaluated the market and found that the IBM cloud solution architecture offered the right combination of features, flexibility, reliability and scalability for its requirements. Late in 2013, Vault Systems began working with IBM and IBM Business Partner The Missing Link to design and implement a scalable application delivery platform based on the IBM NeXtScale System. The choice of NeXtScale was easy when the platform s relatively low cost and powerful capabilities were stacked up against competing offerings. There is nothing on the market at the moment that offers a faster solution, says Taylor-Price. Featuring Intel Xeon E v2 CPUs and 128GB RAM per server, the NeXtScale solution offers a fast and upgradeable platform that allows Vault Systems to deliver guaranteed quality of service to its customers. Secure with open-source knowledge IBM s NeXtScale System is based on the open-source OpenStack cloud computing platform, allowing Vault Systems to customize and extend its environment to suit its requirements. That design ensured the company could not only deliver a robust secure cloud solution, but one secured to Government ASD PROTECTED standards, which are difficult and prohibitively expensive for independent organizations to obtain. Strong information security is important given that JSA-accredited agencies regularly handle large quantities of sensitive personal information. Not only is the environment compliant to those standards, but we are able to offer best-effort services that are compliant to those standards as well, explains Taylor-Price. This can bring a customer to full compliance in a matter of hours versus years. If a customer wanted to show auditors they were compliant with government standards, they could use our services and just tick that box. Throughout the process, Vault Systems found IBM and The Missing Link s knowledge of OpenStack to be quite amazing, says Taylor-Price. It takes a lot of work to get OpenStack up to government security levels, but our representative s knowledge of OpenStack and the IBM systems was brilliant. It was a level of service we really hadn t expected from a company as big as IBM. 3

4 With IBM NeXtScale, if we get a big new customer, the new environment is provisioned and ready to do work within 15 to 20 minutes of receiving the order. Rupert Taylor-Price, JN Solutions CEO and a Director of Vault Systems Military-grade security The fact that the NeXtScale System is based on the OpenStack cloud computing platform is a significant benefit for Vault Systems, since it allows implementation partners to deploy and customize exactly the capabilities their clients require. For government and private-sector customers requiring high levels of security, the ability to tap into Vault Systems secure environment can save them the time and expense of separate certification, which can cost over $750,000 to obtain individually. With the recent changes in the Australian Privacy Act, we ve had a lot of interest from the private sector, says Taylor-Price. They are aware of the potential reputational risk and penalties in place, and are keen to have their SaaS environments hosted in military-grade security to protect their data. Open, expandable design IBM NeXtScale s use of the open-source OpenStack technology also ensures that Vault Systems can quickly add new equipment and capabilities as customers require. Such flexibility isn t available in competing solutions, which often require long lead times and involve considerable expense. If you go to one of our competitors and ask for services with the disaster recovery and security capabilities we provide, they will have to build something physically for you, Taylor-Price explains. The idea of getting something cost-effective for six hours use is impractical: they have a six-to-eight-week lead time, and the charges involved are astronomical. With IBM NeXtScale, if we get a big new customer, the new environment is provisioned and ready to do work within 15 to 20 minutes of receiving the order, due to the spare capacity we hold, and IBM is quick to deliver any top-ups in capacity that we need. 4

5 If we hadn t chosen IBM NeXtScale, we would have spent three times as much on features that wouldn t benefit us. Rupert Taylor-Price, JN Solutions CEO and a Director of Vault Systems Disrupting the industry This simplicity directly affected the pricing structure that Vault Systems was able to offer its customers, who had previously had few competitively priced options when it came to secure cloud hosting for their requirements. If we hadn t chosen IBM NeXtScale, we would have spent three times as much on features that wouldn t benefit us, Taylor-Price explains. At the scale we want, that just wasn t viable. Future plans Strong demand for secure private cloud solutions means Vault Systems expects its business and its IBM NeXtScale infrastructure to grow significantly in coming years. We already expect to be doing significantly more than doubling growth each year, says Taylor-Price. NeXtScale s price point was absolutely critical in terms of what we re doing. The way we ve designed the business, we re certainly capable of dealing with that growth. For more information Contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/nextscale For more on Vault Systems visit: For more information on JN Solutions visit: jnsolutions.com.au 5

6 Copyright IBM Corporation 2014 IBM Australia Ltd Level 13 IBM Centre 601 Pacific Highway St Leonards NSW 2065 Produced in Australia September 2014 IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, and NeXtScale System are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at Copyright and trademark information at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon and Xeon Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. The performance data and client examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual performance results may vary depending on specific configurations and operating conditions. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided. The client is responsible for ensuring compliance with laws and regulations applicable to it. IBM does not provide legal advice or represent or warrant that its services or products will ensure that the client is in compliance with any law or regulation. Please Recycle XSC03177-AUEN-02