Case study: Cost-effective infrastructure that can scale with the seasons 

By Matt Foskett, HPE Business Unit Manager, Dicker Data NZ

Case study: Cost-effective infrastructure that can scale with the seasons 

Trevelyan’s is a New Zealand business that provides cold storage for fruit bound for export—mostly kiwifruit and avocados. The business’ activity is highly seasonal, peaking during ‘kiwi season’, which typically runs from March to May. 

Until recently, Trevelyan’s was using a dated, on-premise IT infrastructure with several disparate components. As the business had grown, it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain rigorous security, control infrastructure costs, and implement digital innovation. Trevelyan had no ability to adjust their infrastructure capacity based on seasonal demand, and their costs remained consistent year-round. 

Determined to modernise their infrastructure and overcome these challenges, Trevelyan turned to Vision Lab - their long-term IT services provider, and experienced Dicker Data partner. 

Vision Lab helped Trevelyan’s transition from their on-premise infrastructure to a new HPE Greenlake solution which provides private cloud, delivered as-a-service. This has delivered significant improvements in terms of speed, affordability, scalability, and ease of management.  

Challenge:  

Dated, on-premise IT infrastructure which was proving increasingly difficult to manage, secure and scale.   

Solution: 

A new, fully-managed infrastructure solution based on HPE GreenLake, implemented by the experts at Vision Lab.  

Benefits: 

• Greater cost control with a pay-as-you-go model 
• Enhanced scalability and flexibility 
• Consolidated management 
• Speed and productivity 

Challenges 

Trevelyan’s is the largest single-site kiwifruit and avocado packhouse in New Zealand—with four export packhouses, a local market packhouse, and 40+ cool stores.  

While demand for Trevelyan’s’ services had increased significantly in recent years, the capacity of their IT infrastructure had not. They were still relying on a dated on-premise infrastructure with various disparate components. This presented several challenges:  

• Lack of scalability: the on-premise infrastructure was rigid and static, and couldn’t be easily scaled according to the business’ growth or seasonal fluctuations in demand.  
• Security risks: the dated infrastructure was also hard to control from a security perspective. Updates had to be installed manually, and there was no overarching visibility regarding potential vulnerabilities.  
• Cost control: the business had no ability to expand or contract their IT infrastructure spend. This meant that at certain times of the year, when business was slow, they were paying considerably more than was necessary.  
• Complex management: the previous infrastructure had grown organically over time and consisted of multiple components— not all of which worked seamlessly together. Managing this disparate infrastructure was becoming a headache for the IT team.   
• Speed and performance: the current infrastructure was also dated and slow. This inhibited employees’ productivity and their ability to service customers efficiently.  
• Disaster recovery: the business also lacked a robust solution for disaster recovery and back-up. This was a major compliance and operational risk for the business that required rapid resolution.  

Another challenge for the business was its remote New Zealand location—which lacked reliable internet connectivity. This made it very difficult for the business to consider a public cloud option.  

As Trevelyan’s’ long-term IT services provider, Vision Lab strongly recommended that the business update its infrastructure to overcome these challenges.  

Solution 

Vision Lab recommended, and subsequently implemented, a new solution built on HPE GreenLake. Delivered as a managed service, HPE GreenLake offers the security and practicality of private cloud—with the scalability and flexibility of a public cloud model.   

This high-performance solution provides Trevelyan’s with 99.9999% availability, faster resolution, and industry-leading support. It also includes access to Infosight: a cloud-based analytics platform that monitors Trevelyan’s’ environment and predicts and detects the source of any potential issues.    

The new HPE GreenLake solution was implemented in just a few months, and the existing on-premise infrastructure was recycled into a disaster recovery solution.   

Benefits 

As a Dicker Data partner, Vision Lab was able to provide Trevelyan’s with an enterprise-grade solution at just a fraction of the cost. This has delivered several important benefits:  

Cost savings 

Trevelyan’s now pay for their infrastructure monthly and pay for only what they need. This means they can scale spend up or down depending on seasonal fluctuations, which positively impacts their bottom line. 

“During the main packing season, which runs from February to June, our server infrastructure has a heavy load. The ability to add more server resources during this time has significantly improved our operations and reliability, as well as allowed us to control costs,” says Trevelyan’s.  

Scalability 
The business now has highly nimble storage, with the ability to scale up or down depending on requirements. 

Ease of management 

Built-in automation and seamless self-service tools make it far easier for Trevelyan’s’ IT team to manage the solution. They also now have at-a-glance insight via a management portal. 

“From an IT management perspective, having access to HPE’s GreenLake Cloud Portal tools has allowed us to keep an eye on our environment. In the last 12 months everything has been running so well we have not had to submit any support requests,” says Trevelyan’s.

Power and capacity 

The business’ infrastructure now has the speed and performance it needs to maximise employee productivity and deliver optimal customer service. 

 
“Due to fibre not being available at our location, we are reliant on largely unreliable wireless internet solutions. These solutions also have high latency, so for Trevelyan’s, an onsite server solution is the only option – and to have a solution like HPE GreenLake available is a huge help,” Trevelyan’s says.   

Security and disaster recovery 

Trevelyan’s also now benefits from HPE GreenLake’s zero-trust approach to security, with built-in encryption capabilities for ultimate peace of mind. HP’s continuous data protection capabilities provide always-on replication instead of periodic snapshots. This means Trevelyan’s can now "rewind" from incidents within a window of seconds, not just minutes. 

“Having extra security thanks to HPE GreenLake has given our business peace of mind, and ensures we are adhering with all industry requirements,” says Trevelyan’s.

Find out more 

Want to learn more about this solution and how it could work for your organisation? Get in touch.