Sherry FitzGerald moves its IT to the private cloud

26 Sep 2011

Left to right, Andrew Miller, head of sales and marketing, Unity Technology Solutions, and Brian Dooley, associate director and IT manager of Sherry FitzGerald

Property firm Sherry FitzGerald has consolidated its entire IT network – spanning 114 branches – into one location at its Dublin head office.

The contract was completed by Unity Technology Solutions, which virtualised Sherry FitzGerald’s entire server and storage platform.

“Sherry FitzGerald identified a need to upgrade its existing server infrastructure and consolidate all of its disparate information into a single location,” Brian Dooley, associate director and IT manager, Sherry FitzGerald, said.

Following a successful evaluation phase, it was determined that a centrally deployed virtualised solution incorporating Dell Servers, EqualLogic SANs and VMware vSphere as the hypervisor layer addressed Sherry FitzGerald’s needs while also relying on the Microsoft System Centre management console to provide full visibility of the entire Server 2008 Infrastructure.

“As our mail platform was also coming to end of life, we were keen to upgrade to MS Exchange 2010 at this time to reap the benefits of this in parallel to the server upgrade. 

“We have future proofed our investment to accommodate the adoption of future technologies and we now have a platform capable of supporting a fully virtualised desktop environment,” Dooley said.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com