CEF selects HPE Greenlake to build out digitisation strategy

Electrical wholesale network City Electrical Factors (CEF) is set to deploy HPE GreenLake as the first stage of its digital transformation. CEF plans to use HPE GreenLake platform to optimise its infrastructure management and security using disaster recovery capabilities provided by IT services firm Zerto. HPE Greenlake provides an on-demand service for IT infrastructure.

When selecting the technologies for digital transformation, CEF wanted to focus on systems that would enable it to move to the cloud, enhance security and strengthen customer relationships. Key requirements were to increase the company’s protection against cyber threats and external disruptions, ensure the continuity of high-quality customer service, and the reduction of energy consumption and thereby of the group’s carbon footprint.

CEF said it also plans to simplify IT administration tasks using HPE GreenLake Management Services. The new platform will be able to support the business in the UK, which offers the potential to be replicated globally throughout the other regions it operates in, including North America, Ireland, Spain and Australia.

As part of the disaster recovery environment, HPE said that by using Zerto, CEF will be able to reduce its recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) from 24 hours down to minutes. According to HPE, this will enable external end users to remain unaffected and allow the business to continue trading. 

CEF chose HPE as a way to enable it to use cloud technologies to improve the service offering it offers to customers.

Jon Higginson, IT director at CEF responsible for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: “As we operate over 400 stores globally, we need to ensure that we have a consistent platform that delivers an ongoing positive customer experience, scales as we grow and provides the flexibility to be tailored to potential future requirements.”

He said that the disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities provided through Zerto will enable CEF to deliver enhanced stability and reliability for its business operations.

With the deployment of HPE GreenLake Management Services, CEF’s IT infrastructure stack will be managed by HPE. By reducing the time spent on management, CEF estimates that a fifth of the IT team’s time will be freed up. This additional time will allow the group to focus on addressing customer’s needs and requirements and accelerate its cloud journey in additional regions. HPE GreenLake is also being used for the migration of CEF’s bespoke applications to a hybrid cloud platform designed for both cloud-native and legacy workloads.

The contract involves a datacentre migration to global International Business Exchange (IBX) datacentres operated by HPE partner, Equinix.

After the initial roll-out of HPE GreenLake with Zerto at its disaster recovery site in the UK, CEF is planning to deploy HPE GreenLake in Australia as well as at its production site in the UK.