Saga Group modernized its VMware environment, gaining cloud flexibility and savings
This trusted lifestyle provider for the 50+ demographic modernized its VMware environment, migrated to a hosted colocation model and set the stage for digital growth across its service lines.
Industry
Travel & Hospitality, Financial Services
Challenge
To maintain its exceptional customer service and stability — and gain future cloud portability — Saga Group needed to modernize its VMware environment, which required a lift-and-shift migration out of its on-premises data centers into a colocation hosting environment.
Outcome Rackspace Technology supported Saga Group's modernization journey, boosting operational efficiency and enhancing service reliability for 9.6 million customers in financial, travel, and lifestyle services. Solutions Private Cloud Platforms Colocation, VMwareOur customer
Saga Group is the UK’s leading specialty provider of services and products tailored for people over 50 in five business sectors — cruises, travel, insurance, finance and publishing. Founded in the 1950s, Saga is now an evolving digital lifestyle brand. With 9.6 million customers, representing over two-thirds of the senior demographic, the Saga brand has become one of the most recognized and trusted brands among UK seniors. Today, Saga Group is repositioning and modernizing its technology to meet its customers’ changing needs.
"We're not a start-up, so we can't simply start fresh in the cloud. We want to enhance our internal skills and capabilities while making the right decisions with the right partners to support each of our services effectively."
Situation
To maintain its reputation as a trusted lifestyle brand for nearly 10 million customers, Saga Group recognized the importance of modernizing its IT infrastructure to address evolving security and compliance standards and support its vision of the future. Specifically, it aimed to update its VMware environment to harness modern cloud-ready capabilities and transition to an opex cost model for improved cost efficiency. Saga Group required additional expertise to support its in-house team throughout this technology shift and achieve a seamless data center exit.
Furthermore, a VMware modernization project involved several complex steps, including re-platforming its VMware ESXi estate, migrating its on-premises data center to a hosted colocation environment, decommissioning several legacy platforms, and moving some on-premises services to SaaS.
Modernizing its VMware estate “was not a small piece of work for us; it was an incredibly complex project,” said Ray Brown, Head of Technology Operations at Saga Group. "Migrating to hosted colocation required more than just moving our VMware environment. We needed to address network connectivity across our various environments. With services both remaining in-house and transitioning out, coordinating this significant shift impacted every part of our operations."
To support this transformation, Saga Group chose an external technology partner to enhance its in-house expertise. The company sought a team that could provide essential technical skills and collaborate closely to ensure a seamless modernization.
“We didn’t experience a single outage during our VMware modernization project. Yes, it was difficult. Yes, it was big. But there were no business disruptions. That’s an incredibly good outcome at the end of a major IT project.”
Solution
Saga Group selected Rackspace Technology to provide strategic support for its VMware infrastructure modernization project. The company wanted to tap into the deep expertise and scalable support Rackspace Technology offers in several critical areas, including:
- VMware
- Infrastructure modernization
- Colocation services
- Professional services
- SaaS migrations
Technical teams from Rackspace Technology and Saga Group worked together in close coordination throughout the 18-month engagement to plan and execute every critical step in the modernization and colocation migration project, including:
- Modernizing the legacy VMware ESXi estate
- Defining migration and network requirements for the colocation environment
- Procuring Dell® hardware
- Decommissioning outdated platforms
- Transitioning select services to SaaS
- Strategizing optimal migration timing for applications, grouping them effectively and mapping their dependencies
- Completing the process on schedule without creating any downtime for Saga Group or its customers
According to Brown, “The Rackspace Technology team handled essential maintenance tasks and monitored our services, allowing our internal team to stay focused on strategic initiatives. This partnership was vital to keeping our business running smoothly throughout the 18-month project.”
Saga Group and Rackspace worked side-by-side to execute a large and complex IT project over 18 months — including over 300 servers and 50-plus business applications and services — without one single system outage.
Outcome
“Despite the massive size and complexity of our VMware modernization project, our company’s daily business operations were never disrupted at any point during the entire 18-month project,” reported Brown. “This outcome speaks to the expertise and commitment of both our in-house and Rackspace teams. We take a lot of pride in that outcome.
“A key factor in our success was our relationship with Rackspace,” Brown added. “It remained strong throughout the project, despite many challenges.”
Brown continued, “The modernization and hosted colocation lift-and-shift project was very large. It was difficult. It was challenging. But we achieved what we set out to achieve, and we could not have done it without our internal team and our Rackspace team. That's key, because it was a long-term relationship between two organizations undertaking a major, complex project.”
According to Brown, Rackspace achieved five critical successes throughout the Saga Group’s VMware modernization project:
- Efficiently managed complex requirements while keeping the project on schedule
- Collaborated closely with Saga Group’s team to resolve issues and quickly overcome challenges
- Enhanced storage and CPU capabilities more rapidly than in previous environments
- Maintained flexibility throughout the project, implementing strategic adjustments to improve results
- Upheld IT stability at every phase, and maintained momentum throughout the project
“The past several years have been transformative for Saga Group,” said Brown. “We’ve invested in our core platforms and re-platformed key solutions across business units. Rackspace enabled us to centralize our resources and modernize our infrastructure, helping us reach our goal of gaining the flexibility to leverage advanced technologies.
“Our focus on innovation allows us to continue standing out in a crowded marketplace,” Brown added. “We’ve implemented technological solutions that align with our business goals, and modernizing our VMware ESXi estate was a significant milestone on this journey. Now, we’re proactively planning our next steps to ensure continued growth and adaptability.”
About Rackspace Technology
Rackspace Technology is a hybrid, multicloud solutions expert. We combine our expertise with the world’s leading technologies — across AI, applications, data and security — to deliver end-to-end solutions. We have a proven record of advising customers based on their business challenges, designing solutions that scale, building and managing those solutions, and optimizing returns into the future. As a global hybrid, multicloud technology services pioneer, we deliver innovative capabilities to help customers build new revenue streams, increase efficiency and create incredible experiences. Named a best place to work, year after year according to Fortune, Forbes and Glassdoor, we attract and develop world-class talent to deliver the best expertise to our customers. Everything we do is wrapped in Fanatical Experience® — our obsession with customer success that drives us to help each customer work faster, smarter and stay ahead of what’s next.
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