Expro International Group Ltd

Oil Services Firm Consolidates Servers, Simplifies IT with Branch Optimization Solution

Expro is a leading provider of oil-and-gas services and products. As the company expanded to 150 offices in 50 countries, its branch servers multiplied. Expro decided to centralize servers but needed to address the challenge of increased traffic on its wide area network (WAN) and the productivity impact on field workers accessing files over the network. Expro decided to replace branch servers with the Windows Server® on WAAS (Wide Area Application Services) solution, a Cisco WAN optimization appliance that also runs basic IT services. Expro anticipates consolidating 25 branch servers and streamlining IT operations and costs. With the help of Meriplex Communications, Expro has optimized expensive network bandwidth, improved speed of access to centralized applications by up to 94 percent, and increased compliance with governmental regulations by locating data centrally.

 

Situation

Expro International Group Ltd., based in Reading, United Kingdom, is a leading provider of services and products that measure, improve, control, and process flow from oil and gas wells. Expro has grown rapidly in recent years, both organically and through strategic acquisitions, to become an industry leader in the global oil and gas market. Expro employs 5,000 people in 150 branch offices located in 50 countries on all seven continents.

The High Cost of Decentralized IT

Historically, Expro had a decentralized IT infrastructure, with file and print servers at each branch office. This structure gave branches access to needed applications and files in the event of a wide-area network (WAN) outage. It also enabled field personnel to access and print files quickly without waiting for data to move across WAN links. E-mail messaging was also administered regionally with about 25 servers running Microsoft® Exchange Server e-mail messaging and collaboration software scattered across many locations. Smaller offices typically had a single physical server, medium-size offices had two servers, and larger offices had three or more (see Table 1). Over time, Expro accumulated approximately 200 servers across its 150 branch offices, and 20 each in its London, England, and Beltsville, Maryland, data centers.

Windows Server on WAAS fills multiple roles in one piece of hardware. It has given us tremendous value and a way to continue growing our business without growing our IT costs. Sheree Fields Chief Information Officer, Expro International Group Ltd.

As Expro grew—with one acquisition almost doubling its size in June 2006—the global server infrastructure became increasingly expensive to maintain. For each new server at small and medium-size branches, the IT staff had to purchase the hardware and software —an average U.S. $7,000 expense—then spend a significant amount of time configuring and deploying it. As Expro has few dedicated IT resources in these branch offices, IT staff members from larger offices had to travel to set up servers whenever new offices opened.

Operational costs for servers in small and medium-size branches were also becoming increasingly challenging, especially as the business grew. Because it was difficult to monitor and manage physical branch servers remotely, the central IT staff was not always aware of issues that could cause servers to go down. Further, local backups were expensive to conduct. “I needed to hire additional IT staff to handle the growth but knew that my management would not support this,” says Martin Ogden, Head of Infrastructure and Operations Support for Expro. “I knew I had to do something to operate more cost effectively.”
 

Extending Centralized Applications over the WAN

Expro also needed to optimize its use of expensive WAN bandwidth, which was already approaching capacity. The company wanted to centrally deploy new productivity-boosting applications, such as Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server for improved collaboration, but accessing such applications across the WAN would require even more bandwidth.

Expro began using Office SharePoint Server 2003 to centrally post the latest versions of engineering documents, quality-assurance procedures, maintenance manuals, and other documents that field personnel needed to service wells and install and maintain Expro equipment. As the use of Office SharePoint Server expanded geographically, downloading documents over lengthy WAN links had the potential to impact employee productivity, with large documents taking a great deal of time to download. “Our people found ways around the low bandwidth so they weren’t waiting around, but we wanted them to be able to go to the SharePoint site and get what they needed, when they needed it,” Ogden says.

IT-services traffic between branches and the U.K. and U.S. data centers also consumed a great deal of bandwidth. To maintain branch user security, Expro required most users to authenticate to the network over (Active Directory®) domain controllers in London and Beltsville. The 10 largest offices had their own domain controllers, but all other branches authenticated through the central data centers. This traffic consumed bandwidth that Expro wanted to use for productivity-enhancing applications such as Office SharePoint Server.
 

New Regulatory Hurdles

As Expro established branch offices around the world, it encountered new regulatory challenges that required it to be more diligent about documenting its activities. Such regulations required Expro to enhance the documentation of its financial activities around the world, retaining e-mail correspondence with local government officials and maintaining auditable records of products sold to various countries.

“To cost-effectively deploy the software needed to ensure compliance with these new regulations, we had to centralize as much data as possible,” Ogden says. “Without centralizing our Exchange Server servers, journaling our e-mail correspondence would require 21 additional branch servers running Symantec Enterprise Vault, plus the operational resources to maintain these servers. If we centralized our messaging servers, we could really cut costs.”

Solution

To reduce IT costs, maximize bandwidth use, and comply with new international regulations, Expro realized that it needed to centralize IT data and applications. However, centralizing servers and files presented application performance challenges. While opening a 10-megabyte file from a local file server might take a few seconds, opening the same file across a lower-bandwidth WAN could take several minutes.

Meriplex Communications was important to the success of the Windows Server on WAAS project. Sheree Fields Chief Information Officer, Expro International Group Ltd.

A longtime user of Cisco networking gear, Expro had evaluated the Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS)—a comprehensive WAN optimization solution that accelerates application traffic over the WAN, delivers video to the branch office, and hosts branch-office IT services. This evaluation focused on how to transfer files using the Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol. When a branch user opens a file in the data center, Cisco WAAS checks to see if it has a copy in its cache. If so, it checks to see if there have been any changes and requests only the changes rather than the entire file. Also, Cisco WAAS compresses data, further optimizing WAN traffic. The result is that files open across the WAN at LAN-like speeds.

With the October 2008 availability of Windows Server® on WAAS, a jointly developed and supported program by Cisco and Microsoft, Expro decided to move forward with a branch optimization solution. Windows Server on WAAS integrates the Windows Server 2008 operating system and related services such as Active Directory, DHCP, DNS, and print services into the Cisco WAAS appliance at the branch. With Windows Server on WAAS, Expro would be able to deploy the IT services it needed at the branch on the Cisco appliance while taking advantage of the WAN optimization and application acceleration capabilities of Cisco WAAS for centralized data and applications.

The Windows Server on WAAS appliance includes a Server Core Installation, which is a new option with Windows Server 2008. The Server Core Installation lets administrators install a lean version of Windows Server 2008 containing only the elements the administrator selects. Since there are fewer files installed, there is less overhead and fewer attack vectors exposed to the network.

 “With Windows Server on WAAS, we would essentially have local domain controllers in each branch office without the need to have a server in the office,” Ogden says. “Windows Server on WAAS gave us the best of both worlds:  optimization of centralized applications and storage, and cost-efficient branch IT services.”

Also, because Expro had already deployed Cisco routers and switches and Windows Server across its infrastructure, Windows Server on WAAS was a natural extension. “With Windows Server on WAAS, our staff needed less training because our employees were already familiar with the Cisco and Microsoft management environments,” Ogden says. “This Cisco and Microsoft offering is properly integrated, giving us a complete, well-tested solution out of the box.”

For support with integrating the solution into its IT infrastructure, Expro turned to Meriplex Communications, a U.S.-based IT solutions provider specializing in the enterprise communications market. “We worked closely with Expro to identify the optimal configuration for each branch and ensure that the deployment ran smoothly with minimal impact to end users,” says David Henley, Vice President, Meriplex Communications.

Figure 1. Windows Server on WAAS Deployment Architecture

“Meriplex Communications was important to the success of the Windows Server on WAAS project,” says Sheree Fields, Chief Information Officer for Expro International Group Ltd.

Windows Server on WAAS is now deployed in 37 Expro branches and communicates with other Cisco WAAS appliances in the two central data centers (see Figure 1). The branch appliances run the Server Core installation option for Windows Server 2008. Going forward, Expro will install one Windows Server on WAAS appliance for each new branch instead of physical servers.

Benefits

By deploying Windows Server on WAAS in its branch infrastructure, Expro has been able to reduce hardware and IT management costs and conserve precious network bandwidth. It has also been able to speed up access to centralized data and applications by as much as 94 percent, which helps increase productivity. And with servers maintained and backed up centrally, Expro is better able to meet regulatory requirements.

Streamlined IT Operations

In its first phase of deploying Windows Server on WAAS, Expro has consolidated its 25 messaging servers, removing 21 of them from the field. Going forward, Expro will no longer install servers in branch offices; it will only install one Windows Server on WAAS appliance in each branch office to provide WAN optimization and cost-efficient branch IT services. “With Windows Server on WAAS, we expect to eliminate 25 branch servers over the next year and considerably streamline IT operations,” Fields says. “We also avoided the need to purchase and install 21 e-mail journaling servers.”

With Windows Server on WAAS, we expect to eliminate 25 branch servers over the next year and considerably streamline IT operations. Sheree Fields Chief Information Officer, Expro International Group Ltd.

Because Expro IT employees no longer requisition, configure, and deploy new field servers and now remotely manage fewer branch servers, they can run a more efficient IT department. More importantly, they can help open branches faster to meet business needs. “When we open a new branch office, we will no longer have to send an expensive IT specialist,” Ogden says. In fact, nontechnical branch personnel can install Windows Server on WAAS without IT assistance. “We can configure a Windows Server on WAAS appliance, ship it to a branch, and have someone plug it in,” Ogden continues.

Bandwidth Conservation

By using Windows Server on WAAS to optimize WAN traffic and offload the WAN of routine IT services such as user authentication, Expro has more bandwidth available for higher-value application traffic, such as document downloads from SharePoint sites. This bandwidth conservation enables Expro to pack more traffic onto its current WAN and delay new bandwidth expenditures. For example, the company can now deploy Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 for voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony and Web conferencing capabilities, which the WAN would not have been able to accommodate previously.

Improved Performance, Higher Productivity

Since deploying Windows Server on WAAS, Expro has experienced a considerable improvement in the performance of centralized applications such as SAP, Exchange Server, Office SharePoint Server, AutoCAD, and Advitium accessed over the WAN. “We saw a 94 percent performance increase in opening large documents across the WAN,” says Dale Joaquin, IT Infrastructure Architect, Expro International Group Ltd. “Even 5-megabyte spreadsheets open in about five seconds. Instantaneous information access means that employees no longer have to take paper copies of manuals and other documents with them. They know that they can get the information they need, when they need it.”

Because Windows Server on WAAS is so cost effective and easy to install, Expro has even installed it in offices that did not previously have servers. This gives even the smallest Expro outposts higher availability and superb application responsiveness. For example, the company has two locations in Nigeria that only have access to virtual private network connections over satellite links. Employees there experienced slow file downloads and Internet responsiveness. “Since installing Windows Server on WAAS, staff members in those offices have seen a night-and-day difference in the performance of SAP, Web-based applications, and general Web browsing,” Joaquin says. “Routine authentication is also faster. It makes a huge difference in the pace at which employees can work every day.”

Also, with basic IT services provided locally by Windows Server 2008, branch-office employees can function even when the WAN is down, because they can still authenticate to needed IT systems. With no physical branch server, there is no local server failure to impact employee productivity.

Enhanced Regulatory Compliance and Data Security

With critical documents stored on central servers, Expro can increase reliability and reduce management overhead of data backups. It can also centrally and cost-effectively install the software needed to journal e-mail messages, document critical transactions, and monitor servers for regulatory compliance.

If anything happens to a Windows Server on WAAS appliance in a branch-office, there is no impact to data on that appliance, because it is also stored in the data center. Additionally, the Windows Server on WAAS appliances is encrypted, safeguarding data in case of theft.

“Windows Server on WAAS fills multiple roles in one piece of hardware,” Fields concludes. It has given us tremendous value and a way to continue growing our business without growing our IT costs.”

Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008, with built-in Web and virtualization technologies, enables you to increase the reliability and flexibility of your server infrastructure. New virtualization tools, Web resources, and security enhancements help you save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and optimized datacenter. Powerful new tools like IIS 7.0, Server Manager, and Windows® PowerShell, allow you to have more control over your servers and streamline Web, configuration, and management tasks. Advanced security and reliability enhancements like Network Access Protection and the Read-Only Domain Controller option for Active Directory Domain Services harden the operating system and help protect your server environment to ensure you have a solid foundation on which to build your business.

For more information, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

 

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about Cisco Systems products and services, call (408) 526-4000 or visit the Web site at:
www.cisco.com

For more information about Meriplex Communications services, visit the Web site at: www.meriplex.com For more information about Expro International Group, Ltd. products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.exprogroup.com