AEC a Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI) company, has emerged as a national leader in the field of modern electronics, manufacturing capabilities, and repair and maintenance services. AEC plays a key role in localizing 50% of the Kingdom's total government military spending and is one of the top three companies providing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Services in Saudi Arabia. AEC employs more than 2200 employees and has premium capabilities in design and manufacturing, systems engineering and integration, systems development and IT services capabilities for Security, Energy, Defence & Aerospace.
Nutanix has enabled us to deploy database servers with one click - including clustering, cloning, backup, and other features, in just 20 to 30 minutes.
As a technology-oriented company, AEC focused on transitioning from legacy IT infrastructure to enhanced technology adoption that could support the IT operations team in meeting the ever-growing and continuously changing needs of the modern world. After a careful assessment by AEC’s skilled technical team and technology experts, it was found that there was a need for advanced, technology-driven workflows for provisioning, configuring, and keeping servers patched and up-to-date to maintain services. Our assessment teams also discovered that the technology-driven nature of the company made it mandatory to have a unified system for fixing potential issues and to improve the ability of the system to self-correct itself if such errors occur in the future. We are a managed services provider and our business demands more than availability from our IT infrastructure. We enter into legal agreements with enterprises to gurantee a minium quality of service (QoS). Typically, the QoS parameters are related to the availability of the system, data storage, security guarantees, and network for efficient execution of the application at peak loads. We are now deploying strict SLAs for our managed services which is offering financial agility to the company. We are managing and delivering IT services such as as network, application, infrastructure, backup and recovery, and security management for many clients like Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tabadul and Princess Noura University and several others. We needed enhanced support systems and structures to meet the agreed service-level for quality, flexibility, and ease of scalability. We were also required to make a rapid shift from manual workflows to automated & technology-driven systems. “We needed to develop structured systems while minimizing manual workflows in order to expedite processes, reduce errors,” commented Fahad Al Naeem, SVP ICT at Advanced Electronics Company.
Nutanix HCI are created to avoid any downtime at all and was able to achieve fast failover by actively monitoring servers and instantly rerouting traffic when an issue is detected, resulting in zero downtime even during maintenance. Highly-regulated industries, like government services need to meet such high availability standards for compliance purposes. Failback is a crucial part in disaster recovery and dataprotection strategy often occurring after failover – we are now paying optimal attention to this aspect. Our clients, especially the government organizations, want a robust and comprehensive disaster recovery solution. Nutanix’s unique cloud-first approach appeared appealing from the outset to deliver powerful ransomware and overall data/application protection while reducing complexity. “We realized that Nutanix Disaster Recovery Solution was simple to implement & manage, powerful and affordable,” explained Fahad Al Naeem.
An immediate benefit of Nutanix Cloud platform was the reduction in cost and complexity that existed in traditional storage solutions. Nutanix offers the capability of using policies and rules to scale storage on demand quickly and efficiently. At the same time, the underlying HCI infrastructure from Nutanix has natively integrated compute, network, and storage virtualization technologies, with self-driving operations and management. “Removing the conventional Storage Array drove new levels of structured and streamlined allocation of IT and computing resources and staff productivity,” commented Fahad. “Nutanix enabled us to guide our clients build an IT infrastructure with The Right Availability and Security for Every Application and Workload while scaling to meet business needs without overspending,” concluded Fahad.
Regarding the evaluation process in relation to all competitive solutions, IT teams listed out all the requirements they imagine addressing with the new technology. They wanted a technology with out-of-the-box features that meets the needs of the modern business with the ability to scale globally as customer needs evolve. They also looked at security, interoperability and how intuitive and easy-to-understand the technology’s user-interface and user-experience are. “We arrived at a balanced, carefully considered choice that meets our current needs, future needs, and budget. Nutanix has a deserved reputation in the Saudi market for technological innovation. We asked their existing customers about their experience with the technology, the knowledge and the partner ecosystem surrounding it and all were impressed by Nutanix immediate resolution to their complaint, if any. I believe that this can be the reason why more customers are coming to Nutanix lately and why their current customers stay loyal,” commented Fahad.
The most critical reason every service provider should manage patches and updates quickly and efficiently is security. Desktops, laptops, servers, applications, and network devices represent access points to sensitive and confidential company data. Particularly when it comes to working with clients dealing with health information, financial information, or other personal data, you need to have good security protocols in place. “We are selling the final solution to the end user. We need to deliver the best results, regardless of whether the server is managed by the customer or we keep full control. Nutanix automated patch management is helping us apply patches and updates across the entire system in one go and hence maintain system stability, reduce vulnerabilities, and keep up with our customers’ compliance obligations,” Fahad remarked.
The ultimate value of Nutanix solution was defined by cost savings, improved customer and employee satisfaction, and better legal compliance. “Nutanix provides a very competitive price for their services. Moreover, running VSAN, HPE SimpliVity, and other clouds on a single platform is not easy to manage. When you have other workflows with other vendors, Nutanix works very well especially in integrating with other storage solutions,” answered Fahad when asked about other solutions included in the evaluation process.
Fahad was quick to point out Nutanix’s active, high-availability architecture which ensures that storage continues operating at the highest performance level providing 24/7 business continuity and uninterrupted access to stored data.
“The post-service experience with Nutanix was exceptional as they took less than 24 hours to close the ticket which is their usual standard. Nutanix has a customer-driven culture focusing on retention goals instead of acquisition, and their support teams always have the bandwidth to meet their customers’ expectations. This is the reason why Nutanix has boasted an incredible NPS score of 92 for six years in a row,”added Fahad.
As a result of this success and since AEC in Saudi has seen substantial, needle-moving results from using Nutanix technology- whether it is improving their IT infrastructure efficiency and processes, or allowing them to better support their growing customer base- AEC now considers Nutanix as a partner who is there beyond the sale. Nutanix is helping AEC keep up with Saudi Arabia’s ambitious digital transformation plan by delivering consistently a true hybrid cloud management experience ticking security feature, regulatory and compliance boxes despite the variety of technologies involved. “Working together, Nutanix and AEC’s ecosystem creates a combined value for the customer that is greater than what the individual entities can provide alone. We find Nutanix willing to dedicate engineering and other resources to collaborate and most importantly, they have the capability and desire to actively participate in the innovation process to create more value for our customers, ” concluded Fahad. AEC is taking the relationship a step further, bringing some of their top people on board and promoting Nutanix technology among their network.