Case Studies CloudBolt Creates Unified Cloud Interface for IHG

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	CloudBolt Creates Unified Cloud Interface for IHG

CloudBolt Creates Unified Cloud Interface for IHG

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services System Integration
Challenge	InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) utilizes four different public clouds due to the size and complexity of their IT infrastructure. They wanted the flexibility of multiple public clouds to use the optimal environment for each workload and to protect themselves against price increases and instabilities in any one public cloud. They had been using VMware's vRealize Automation for managing VMware servers, but it did not provide support for the public clouds that they needed. Furthermore, they found vRA to be extremely time-consuming to maintain, with upgrades requiring a multi-month process and a large professional services cost. The process of installing multi-server, multi-tier apps on any one of these public clouds was onerous and required the administrator to use multiple different interfaces. Read More
About Customer	InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is an English multinational hotels company headquartered in Denham, UK. IHG has more than 5,000 hotels and nearly 750,000 guest rooms in almost 100 countries around the world. Its brands include Candlewood Suites, Crowne Plaza, Even, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Hotel Indigo, Hualuxe, InterContinental and Staybridge Suites. IHG has an annual revenue of over $1.8 billion and employs more than 7,300 people. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol IHG. Read More
Solution	CloudBolt provided IHG with a single user interface and API through which they can now deploy complex apps to any of the four public clouds they use, manage these apps and their constituent servers over the course of their lifecycle, and automate their business policies and best practices surrounding server deployment and management. Their IT group has built blueprints in CloudBolt for deploying 40+ node Apache Hadoop clusters to the public cloud. After being deployed, these services can be scaled up and down from CloudBolt, and eventually decommissioned. Since CloudBolt has native Chef Enterprise integration, they are able to perform these tasks without the end user needing to separately work in the Chef UI. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

System Integration

Challenge

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) utilizes four different public clouds due to the size and complexity of their IT infrastructure. They wanted the flexibility of multiple public clouds to use the optimal environment for each workload and to protect themselves against price increases and instabilities in any one public cloud. They had been using VMware's vRealize Automation for managing VMware servers, but it did not provide support for the public clouds that they needed. Furthermore, they found vRA to be extremely time-consuming to maintain, with upgrades requiring a multi-month process and a large professional services cost. The process of installing multi-server, multi-tier apps on any one of these public clouds was onerous and required the administrator to use multiple different interfaces.

About Customer

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is an English multinational hotels company headquartered in Denham, UK. IHG has more than 5,000 hotels and nearly 750,000 guest rooms in almost 100 countries around the world. Its brands include Candlewood Suites, Crowne Plaza, Even, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Hotel Indigo, Hualuxe, InterContinental and Staybridge Suites. IHG has an annual revenue of over $1.8 billion and employs more than 7,300 people. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol IHG.

Solution

CloudBolt provided IHG with a single user interface and API through which they can now deploy complex apps to any of the four public clouds they use, manage these apps and their constituent servers over the course of their lifecycle, and automate their business policies and best practices surrounding server deployment and management. Their IT group has built blueprints in CloudBolt for deploying 40+ node Apache Hadoop clusters to the public cloud. After being deployed, these services can be scaled up and down from CloudBolt, and eventually decommissioned. Since CloudBolt has native Chef Enterprise integration, they are able to perform these tasks without the end user needing to separately work in the Chef UI.

Impact #1	Self-service - CloudBolt’s interface is available to development, QA, and production support groups at IHG, so they are now all empowered to order what they need, when they need it without having to open a ticket for IT and wait for that group to fulfill the request.
Impact #2	Agility - since consumers of IT resources can get what they need when they need it, they have eliminated a blocking step that is present in many companies when a new project starts up.
Impact #3	Vendor independence - having the abstraction of CloudBolt over the various public clouds means that they are insulated from changes that those vendors make, and can more easily switch from one to the other without user retraining.

Impact #1

Self-service - CloudBolt’s interface is available to development, QA, and production support groups at IHG, so they are now all empowered to order what they need, when they need it without having to open a ticket for IT and wait for that group to fulfill the request.

Impact #2

Agility - since consumers of IT resources can get what they need when they need it, they have eliminated a blocking step that is present in many companies when a new project starts up.

Impact #3

Vendor independence - having the abstraction of CloudBolt over the various public clouds means that they are insulated from changes that those vendors make, and can more easily switch from one to the other without user retraining.

Benefit #1	Cost-reduction - CloudBolt brings tools for managing VM sprawl and protecting against unexpectedly large bills from the vendors. Through the use of expiration dates for servers, configurable expiration behavior, visibility into all VMs across all technologies, quotas, cost tracking, and easy deprovisioning of servers & services, IHG is ensuring that they are paying for only what they need and use.

Benefit #1

Cost-reduction - CloudBolt brings tools for managing VM sprawl and protecting against unexpectedly large bills from the vendors. Through the use of expiration dates for servers, configurable expiration behavior, visibility into all VMs across all technologies, quotas, cost tracking, and easy deprovisioning of servers & services, IHG is ensuring that they are paying for only what they need and use.

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Overview

CloudBolt Creates Unified Cloud Interface for IHG

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit