Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leading company in hybrid multicloud technologies, has once again been selected by leading travel management company Bidvest Travel (BIDTravel) as the backbone for its private cloud environment.
Embracing technological innovation, Bidvest Travel (BIDTravel) has redefined travel management services across corporate and leisure sectors. The company provides industry-leading travel management services to both corporate entities and leisure travellers through its extensive local, regional, international, and online networks. In 2018, the company migrated to a hyperconverged environment underpinned by Nutanix. Based on the project’s success it underwent a full upgrade of its Nutanix ecosystem, made up of 80 servers, in February 2024. Which it successfully completed in a month.
“We have been exceptionally happy with the flexibility Nutanix has provided us so the upgrade was a logical progression for us. Given the scale and complexity of the upgrade, there were some challenges. However, 95% of our workloads could be automatically migrated thanks to the power of Nutanix Move. For the rest, we made a few manual interventions, but all of this happened without interruption or downtime to our business,” says Herby Seedat, CIO at BIDTravel.
A critical part of the recent upgrade was a move away from Hyper-V, its legacy virtualisation platform to Nutanix as its hypervisor of choice, a significant shift for the organisation. A move that Seedat says was so seamless that the management team questioned if it had already happened.
According to Seedat, from a resourcing perspective, the business benefits of Nutanix have been clear as BIDTravel’s entire Nutanix infrastructure can be managed by one person and powerful management capabilities deliver complete visibility from a centralised dashboard. Additionally, firmware upgrades are a non-event for the business as they happen automatically in the background without disruption. The Nutanix Move solution has also proved beneficial for BIDTravel in simplifying its virtual machine migrations.
“The benefit of virtualising on Nutanix means we can rapidly respond to new projects. For instance, a new server can be created in 10 minutes as opposed to the 10 days in the past we had to wait before it could go live. We had no downtime across all nine of our operating divisions, which is unheard of. This is a testament to the power of Nutanix and our partner TCM and the real win for me. BIDTravel has enjoyed a massive infrastructure upgrade without any negative impact on the business,” adds Seedat
Today, BIDTravel runs its entire data estate on Nutanix infrastructure. Furthermore, its infrastructure servers, like domain controllers, also run exclusively on Nutanix. One of BIDTravel’s key business applications -A Java-based load balancing solution – and its on-premises ERP environment are powered by Nutanix infrastructure.
As technology forms the cornerstone of BIDTravel’s services, it continues to innovate, part of which means looking through the Nutanix toolbox to unearth new technologies to support its environment. One of these is Nutanix Flow Network Security. Even though BIDTravel is already using the system, it is identifying more ways to integrate it into its environment. There is currently an ongoing project to enable micro-segmentation through Flow to increase the security capabilities of BIDTravel’s infrastructure and better safeguard it from an operational aspect.
“Nutanix has become a critical part of our business. As we continue to engage with them, we learn more about their technology and identify new ways to enhance our environment. For example, the additional security layers that Nutanix offers are exciting, with many opportunities still to unlock,” says Seedat.
“Our partnership with BIDTravel showcases how innovation can drive exceptional outcomes. Their proactive approach to leveraging Nutanix’s advanced technologies exemplifies a forward-thinking mindset, continuously enhancing their infrastructure for optimal performance and security. BIDTravel’s journey is a testament to the transformative power of technology in creating agile and resilient businesses,” says Alex Russell, Regional Sales Manager SADC at Nutanix.