City Electrical Factors moves to the cloud with HPE GreenLake platform for improved customer experience

City Electrical Factors moves to the cloud with HPE GreenLake platform for improved customer experience

(IN BRIEF) City Electrical Factors (CEF), the United Kingdom’s leading electrical wholesale network, has chosen Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform as the first step in its digital transformation journey. The platform will allow CEF to optimize their infrastructure management and improve security using the disaster recovery capabilities of Zerto. CEF is moving to a cloud experience with the HPE GreenLake platform, which will allow them to scale on demand and pay as they use. The company will also simplify their infrastructure management experience using HPE GreenLake Management Services and ensure their business continuity with Zerto for Disaster Recovery. This move will provide CEF with a global platform that can easily be deployed and replicated with a single user experience throughout all their regions. The wholesaler will move into global International Business Exchange data centers operated by HPE partner Equinix, benefitting from HPE Datacenter Technology Services to plan, design and deploy the solution.

(PRESS RELEASE) LONDON, 26-Jan-2023 — /EuropaWire/ — City Electrical Factors (CEF), a leading electrical wholesale network in the United Kingdom, has chosen Hewlett Packard Enterprise‘s (HPE) GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform as a key component of its digital transformation strategy. CEF’s current customer platform, based on outdated technology, has become a bottleneck in providing optimal customer service. To address this, CEF has decided to move to a cloud-based solution with HPE GreenLake.

The HPE GreenLake platform will enable CEF to optimize their infrastructure management and improve security, utilizing the disaster recovery capabilities of Zerto. As part of the solution, CEF will be hosted in Equinix’s global International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers, with HPE’s Datacenter Technology Services providing support for planning, design and deployment. This move will allow CEF to scale on demand and pay as they use, as well as simplify their infrastructure management experience using HPE GreenLake Management Services.

The implementation of HPE GreenLake in the UK will give CEF a global platform that can easily be replicated in all regions, including North America, Ireland, Spain, and Australia. CEF will also entrust the management of its infrastructure stack to HPE, freeing up 20% of the IT team’s time to focus on enhancing offerings and addressing customer needs.

“We’ve enjoyed a long-standing partnership with HPE for the past 15 years, and we are delighted to continue this journey utilizing the HPE GreenLake platform,” said Jon Higginson, IT EMEA Director at CEF. “We were looking to improve our service offering to our customers through the adoption of cloud technologies and we found the HPE GreenLake platform to be the most compelling offer available. 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. The disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities of Zerto in particular will deliver the enhanced stability and reliability we seek for our operations.”

“Running the HPE GreenLake platform in a colocation is the ideal solution for customers like CEF, who are looking for a cloud experience while staying in full control of their IT,” said Matt Harris, managing director UK, HPE. “As a partner first organization, we’re delighted to work with Equinix, the HPE GreenLake Momentum Partner of the Year 2022, to enable CEF to access the hybrid cloud services they require, wherever and whenever they need them. Not only does this give CEF the control over their usage and cost, but it also allows them to free up more of their time that can be further invested into their transformation efforts.”

HPE GreenLake and Zerto will also provide CEF with peace of mind, ensuring close to zero downtime and enabling quick migration of production workloads to the disaster recovery environment. This will reduce the recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) from 24 hours to minutes, minimizing disruption to internal and external end-users and ensuring CEF can continue trading. CEF plans to roll out HPE GreenLake with Zerto in Australia and its production site in the UK, as well as other regions.