Wakefield Canada gets ready for the cloud

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Wakefield Canada, Toronto

Overview Wakefield Canada acquired Castrol’s Canadian

manufacturing operations, becoming

responsible for the blending and packaging

of Castrol products, in addition to its sales,

marketing and distribution operations.

Wakefield Canada was required to transition

manufacturing operations within a few

months, so the company was faced with the

challenge of implementing major operational

changes in a very short time frame.

Solution Softchoice worked closely with Wakefield’s

team to understand the company’s business

goals and strategies, quickly assembling

resources to develop recommendations and

building an implementation timeline. One

of the key considerations was Wakefield’s

request that the new architecture simplify

management of the environment.

Softchoice recommended deploying an

integrated cloud approach, using Cisco UCS,

Cisco UCS Manager, NetApp storage, and

VMware’s vSphere.

Results The private cloud ready infrastructure

underpins Wakefield’s infrastructure,

substantially increasing the efficiency of

both capital and operational expenditures

and provides a standardized and integrated

environment. Wakefield has taken advantage

of Softchoice’s Keystone Maintain Service to

facilitate support of the solution.

Connect with us today. 1.800.268.7638 | www.softchoice.com @softchoice facebook.com/softchoice

Wakefield Canada is the exclusive Canadian

distributor of Castrol premium lubricants and

Canada’s premier integrated manufacturer

& distributor of Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF)

under the brand name H2Blu. With a broad

customer base across Canada, including

retailers, warehouse distributors, quick lubes,

fleet companies, new car dealers and Original

Equipment Manufacturers, Wakefield prides

itself on delivering intuitive customer service.

Wakefield has been on Canada’s Top 50 Best

Managed Companies and Top 50 Best Employer

lists for the past three years, and has

received a Microsoft Pinnacle Award for

its technology successes.

In 2010, Wakefield Canada acquired Castrol’s

Canadian manufacturing operations, becoming

responsible for the blending and packaging of

Castrol products in the Canadian marketplace,

in addition to its sales, marketing and

distribution operations.

As part of the agreement to purchase the

processing facility, Wakefield Canada was

required to transition manufacturing

operations within a few months, so the

company was faced with the challenge of

implementing major operational changes

in a very short time frame.

Starting from a Greenfield

One of the biggest challenges to transitioning

the company to the new operation was the

technology infrastructure, in place since

Wakefield was founded in 2005. It was already

showing signs of strain supporting existing

operations; Kent Mills, Wakefield Canada’s CIO,

saw an opportunity to transition to a greenfield

environment and implement completely new

next generation data center technologies that

could support and grow with the company.

He started a search for a partner that shared

the same dedication to customer service as

Wakefield’s and also had the expertise to

implement and manage the project within an

aggressive timeframe. After a comprehensive

search, he chose UNIS LUMIN (later acquired

by Softchoice) based on its expertise around

data center implementations, and its focus on

working closely with Wakefield to understand

its business objectives and how they related to

the IT infrastructure.

First Steps

Initially, Softchoice worked closely

with Wakefield’s team to understand the

company’s business goals and strategies.

They quickly assembled resources to develop

recommendations and built an implementation

timeline. One of the key considerations was

Wakefield’s request that the new architecture

simplify management of the environment.

Keeping this in mind, UNIS LUMIN/Softchoice

recommended deploying an integrated cloud

approach, using Cisco UCS, Cisco UCS Manager,

NetApp storage, and VMware’s vSphere.

High performance provides a competitive edge

The resulting private cloud ready infrastructure

was implemented on time and now underpins

all of Wakefield’s operations. It substantially

increases the efficiency of both capital and

operational expenditures and provides a more

standardized and integrated environment to

manage than before.

As Wakefield continues to grow, it will see even

more benefits from the new architecture, as it

scales easily as more resources and applications

are added or changed.

Wakefield also gains the benefits of improved

recovery processes, so business interruptions

are minimized, ensuring the company continues

to meet business goals, reducing any impact on

customer service.

“I think the strategic advantage of this platform

is all about flexibility, scalability and a smaller

overall footprint” said Mills, “The infrastructure

has built-in redundancy and failover which

provides a critical advantage for small or

medium size businesses that want to maintain

a stable and reliable environment supporting

customer and partner transactions, while

seamlessly enabling business growth.”

Next steps

Wakefield continues to work closely with

Softchoice, taking advantage of its Keystone

Solutions to manage the support and on-

going health of the infrastructure. Softchoice’s

Keystone Technical Support Centre (KTSC)

serves as the first point of contact for Day II

support of multiple vendors in the new data

centre, including Cisco, NetApp, VMware,

and APC. The simplicity of one number to

call and one organization facilitating support

complements the overall solution, delivering

end-to-end efficiencies for Wakefield Canada.

“ Softchoice was absolutely the gold standard in partners. They are definitely one of the best partners I’ve ever worked with in my twenty-five years of IT management. They simplified the whole landscape for us by being the primary point of contact between multiple vendors for design, support and service, and they maintained a strong proactive relationship with us throughout the project.”

Kent Mills CIO, Wakefield Canada

Wakefield Canada gets ready for the cloud