CASE STUDY
PAUL SMITH SETS BUSINESS AGILITY TREND WITH HYBRID CLOUD
Six years ago, British fashion designer Paul Smith had a goal to optimise its IT function. It sought a vendor that offered interoperable, foundational technologies with the right combination of innovation and value
F
ounded over 40 years ago, Nottingham- based designer retailer Paul Smith
has 14 different collections produced in England and Italy under the global Paul Smith brand. In addition to 17 shops in England, Paul Smith retail stores are found in fashion capitals around the world. Supporting this British fashion success
story is a global IT infrastructure managed by just 15 people in the Nottingham head office. “The role of IT at Paul Smith is
foundational, yet transparent. It is behind everything that happens in our retail stores and everything we do to protect the integrity of our brand,” said Lee Bingham, head of IT at Paul Smith. “IT at Paul Smith facilitates business growth and enables agility in responding to the market.” Paul Smith opens three new stores a
year on average and the demand for IT services from the business is growing. The consumption of IT services is also dictated by the fashion industry’s seasonal activities: spring and fall collections and
48 Spring/Summer 2014
holiday retail sales. “We have to keep up with fluctuating demands for IT services depending on the time of year and profile of users,” said Bingham. “Our goal is to manage costs and improve service delivery, but we are challenged by an IT budget that doesn’t keep up with expectations from the business.” To address this challenge, Paul Smith
aligned itself with Microsoft. Beginning in 2008 with the Windows Server 2008 operating system (OS), Paul Smith has worked with Microsoft to take advantage of the latest virtualisation, cloud computing, and data centre management systems. To help standardise on Microsoft technologies, Paul Smith partners with risual, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network with Gold competencies. When Paul Smith deployed the
Windows Server 2008 OS, it consolidated its data centres and began to deliver more centralised IT services. After upgrading to the Windows Server 2008 R2 OS and Hyper-V virtualisation technology, the
company significantly reduced its server count, decreased its carbon footprint and lowered data centre costs. Paul Smith also used Windows Server
2012 to build private clouds and deployed Microsoft System Centre 2012 data centre management tools to manage them. The company used these technologies to build dynamic data centre and cloud infrastructures with more flexible workloads and automated processes. IT staff used features in Hyper-V that promote virtual machine mobility, such as simultaneous live migration to speed up server maintenance and reduce downtime. “Building private clouds means that
IT staff can enable a more responsive, on- demand allocation of pooled IT resources – such as applications, networks, servers, storage, and services,” explained Bingham. “We can be more agile in responding
to increasingly sophisticated end-user requirements through self-service capabilities and automation, delivering IT services in a dynamic, proactive way
www.retailtechnology.co.uk
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