Overview

pAPi Group is a market-leading business services provider of safety, specialty and industrial services in 200+ locations worldwide with approximately 15,000 team members across the organization. APi provides statutorily mandated and other contracted services to a strong base of long-standing customers across industries, primarily in North America./p pAPi Group is based in New Brighton, Minn. Since 1926, APi has grown, both organically and through disciplined acquisitions, to become the multi-billion-dollar industry leader that it is today. APi uses a segmented operating model designed to improve speed and responsiveness to customers across their businesses, empower local leadership to drive performance and execute key decisions, and foster cross-functional sharing of best practices./p

Supernova Award Category

Tech Optimization and Modernization

The Problem

pAPi Group has been engaged in rapid growth. Previously, it consisted of just a few sites which used direct-attached storage for servers. APi’s acquisition strategy required integrating new offices into the larger corporate infrastructure/p pFile storage, access and protection solutions had begun to negatively impact daily operations. End users in different locations struggled to share design files and project management documents, limiting their ability to collaborate./p pWhen a server died in Syracuse, NY, it took six days to restore a TB of data, and Brian Erickson, IT implementation and acquisitions leader, had to fly there with a USB drive to help facilitate the recovery./p p“We didn’t want to be in that situation again,” said Erickson./p pAs a collaboration, backup and disaster recovery solution, APi implemented the WAFS (Wide-Area File System) platform by Globalscape. However, once APi had more than 25 sites, WAFS could not scale and “performance suffered,” according to Erickson./p pAnother issue with APi’s WAFS implementation was for every TB in the field, they had to store another TB in the data center and then another at their disaster recovery site. “For every TB we backed up we had to store another two. We quickly ran out of physical space,” said Erickson./p

The Solution

pUpon learning about Nasuni, APi deployed a proof-of-concept at a site using Autodesk Revit to build modeling software. They selected Nasuni when it was able to reduce the stand-up time of a Revit model from 45 mins. to just 10. Nasuni also filled the need for unstructured file services, backup, collaboration and disaster recovery utilizing existing hardware and infrastructure./p pWith Nasuni, APi Group was able to accelerate the timeline for its cloud initiative. They had already embraced Office 365 and were backing up data to Microsoft Azure, but IT realized that they were not leveraging Azure’s full potential. While evaluating alternative file storage and data protection solutions, they realized that while some competitive solutions promised similar features, Nasuni was the only platform that offered the scalability to support the anticipated growth of unstructured data, the high-performance access for end users in remote locations and the advanced file protection./p

The results

pNasuni, backed by Azure object storage, is providing APi with file services for 227 TB of unstructured data. End users did not even notice when IT made the cutover from APi Group’s legacy NAS infrastructure to the new cloud-scale services. APi’s IT was able to:/p ul liConvert Storage CAPEX to OPEX with Nasuni’s global file system, UniFS®, which stores all files and metadata in Azure./li liNasuni’s “cloud-first” architecture enables APi to have true global file sharing. IT can enable large-file sharing between offices in California and Florida in just 5 mins./li liWith the Nasuni Management Console, APi’s can administer their enterprise-wide file infrastructure through a single-pane-of-glass./li liWhen APi Group buys a new company, IT merely has to deploy Nasuni virtual edge appliances and establish permissions and shares, then the new location is joined to the global file share in minutes./li liNasuni Continuous Versioning is used for file backup and recovery, which sends all file changes to the cloud every 5 minutes, creating an immutable version history of every file. In the event of data loss incidents, IT can restore access to any previous version of the file or to entire directories within minutes./li liNasuni has enabled APi to move from a rigid, capital-intensive hardware cycle to an as-a-service, pay-as-you-grow model, which contributes to overall digital transformation./li /ul

Metrics

p“When we first deployed Nasuni, the cost versus WAFS was about equal. Where we really saw savings was in hardware costs. We can deploy a standard server. We don’t need 12TB for a 12TB company; only the 30% most used data or whatever is kept locally. It has standardized hardware spend."/p p"We have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars altogether. The key benefit of Nasuni is that it just works. We can deploy it out to a site and as soon as we cut them over to it, it looks like it should.”/p p~Brian Erickson, IT implementation and acquisitions manager, APi Group/p

The Technology

pNasuni offers a file services platform built for the cloud, powered by the world’s only global file system. Nasuni consolidates NAS silos, delivering infinite scale, built-in backup, global file sharing and local file server performance, for half the cost of traditional file infrastructures. By storing enterprise files in an object storage-based global file system and caching just the active changes and metadata on edge appliances, file storage is transformed into a cloud-scale service./p

Disruptive Factor

pNasuni’s platform transformed file sharing and collaboration, backup and recovery, disaster recovery and IT operations with one unified solution, while also easing the transition to the cloud. Backed by Azure object storage, it is now providing file services for 227 TB of unstructured data across 163 APi sites, following a very smooth and efficient transition. strongEnd users did not even notice when IT made the cutover from APi Group’s legacy NAS infrastructure to the new cloud-scale services./strong/p pAPi was also able to convert storage CapEx to Opex with Nasuni’s global file system, UniFS®, which stores all files and metadata in Azure./p pBackup takes place every 5 minutes via snapshots. They are copied to the cloud so there’s no separate data protection software. This ability has enabled APi to instantly recover from ransomware attacks./p

Shining Moment

p“We have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars altogether. The key benefit of Nasuni is that it just works. We can deploy it out to a site and as soon as we cut them over to it, it looks like it should.”/p p“Nasuni enabled us to dodge a few ransomware attacks.”/p p~ Brian Erickson/p