CASE STUDY
Even though the technology served BIDTravel well in those years , there were challenges .
Most of these stemmed from a lack of expertise and BIDTravel had to outsource at a considerable cost . However , the outsourced model proved to be more cost-effective than employing specialists in-house . In 2016 , there was an internal technology shift for BIDTravel , with Herby Seedat taking on the role of CIO .
“ The infrastructure we put in place was starting to show signs of failure . This resulted in business reliability issues . With the public cloud gaining traction in the market , we spent a lot of time investigating opportunities . However , we found that our approach of investing in the private cloud was more cost-effective than going to the public cloud ,” says Seedat .
This was especially true given the scale of BIDTravel ’ s IT infrastructure with 300 on-premises servers . To operate that amount of technology infrastructure in the public cloud would be cost-prohibitive .
BIDTravel was introduced to Nutanix at the end of 2016 and realised that the hyperconverged approach was a suitable IT strategy for their business . After looking at several options , BIDTravel invested in Nutanix in 2018 and migrated 300 servers to their platform .
As part of this migration , BIDTravel aimed to optimise its environment , while transitioning to the cloud . It has taken its services to the cloud while its infrastructure is now hosted on-premises with Nutanix .
Snapshot : Nutanix platform in use at BIDTravel
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure forms the foundation at BIDTravel , offering a unified , scalable solution that integrates compute , storage , and networking across private , hybrid , and multi-cloud environments . AHV Virtualisation delivers a built-in hypervisor , while Prism Management offers centralised , AI-driven control to simplify operations .
Acropolis enhances data services with enterprise-grade storage and compute management , while Nutanix Flow Network Security provides integrated , policydriven protection . Together , these solutions empower organisations to achieve agility , security , and efficiency within a cohesive , easy-to-manage platform , driving innovation .
Start of modernisation
After having successfully used the Nutanix platform in its private cloud infrastructure for six years , BIDTravel decided to embark on a new journey . While BIDTravel wanted to move to the public cloud , research showed that the private cloud would still remain commercially attractive .
“ We decided to remain with Nutanix as we have been happy with their technology ,” says Seedat .
BIDTravel began a complete upgrade of its entire Nutanix ecosystem in February 2024 . It successfully migrated 80 servers within a month to the new Nutanix environment . It also moved away from Microsoft hypervisor , Hyper-V to Nutanix hypervisor , AHV as its hypervisor of choice .
Given the scale and complexity of the upgrade , there were some challenges . However , 95 % of the workloads could be automatically migrated using Nutanix Move . For the rest a few manual interventions were required , but the migration was complete without interruption or downtime for the business .
“ We had no downtime across all nine of our operating divisions . This is a testament to Nutanix and a real win for me . BIDTravel enjoyed an infrastructure upgrade without any negative impact on the business ,” reflects Seedat .
At present , BIDTravel is running its entire data estate on Nutanix infrastructure . Furthermore , its infrastructure servers , like domain controllers , also run exclusively on Nutanix . One of BIDTravel ’ s key business applications , a Java-based load balancing solution , and its onpremises ERP environment are powered by Nutanix infrastructure . Nutanix has become a critical part of BIDTravel ’ s business .
“ As we continue to engage with Nutanix , we learn more about their technology and are identifying new ways to enhance our environment . For example , the additional security layers that Nutanix offers are exciting , with many opportunities still to unlock with the technology ,” says Seedat .
ROI and business productivity
Benefits of Nutanix modernisation at BIDTravel include centralised management ; centralised dashboard for visibility ; seamless upgrades ; simplified migrations ; automatic , background firmware upgrades ; simplified migration of virtual machines ; infrastructure downtime eliminated ; rapid deployment of new servers ; enhanced IT operational efficiency , and business agility .
The business benefits of using Nutanix have also become clear . The legacy three-tier architecture used to require specialists to manage the IT operations . The current modern Nutanix infrastructure requires only one person . Using the management capabilities provided by Nutanix and the simplicity of the environment , BIDTravel has complete visibility of its
52 INTELLIGENTCIO AFRICA www . intelligentcio . com