CASE STUDY

PREMIER FOODS BOOSTS FLEXIBILITY AFTER CDW ORCHESTRATES MIGRATION TO AWS PUBLIC CLOUD.

CHALLENGE ABOUT PREMIER FOODS Premier Foods the British food manufacturer, wanted to explore • Premier Foods plc, established in 1976 is a British food alternatives to the existing data center infrastructure in place for its manufacturer and listed on the Stock Exchange core business operations and at one of its subsidiary businesses, Knighton Foods - putting in place a more flexible and cost-efficient • The group owns and produces many wellknown food method for delivering services to its IT users. Migration to the public brands including Mr. Kipling, Ambrosia, Angel Delight, cloud was under consideration, but the organization needed a clear Sharwoods, Lloyd Grossman sauces, Bisto and view of available options and associated costs. , as well as manufacturing cakes under the ’s brand by license CDW was selected to investigate potential solutions and deliver • Has a workforce of over 4,000 employees and annual a proof of concept. “We could see the benefits of public cloud but revenue of £824.3m needed a technology solutions provider who could demonstrate deep technical knowledge, along with a structured approach to migration that would ensure business continuity,” says Gareth OVERVIEW Byrne-Perkins, Head of Technology and Services at Premier Foods. “CDW showed that it had a complete understanding of public • Premier Foods wanted to move to a more adaptable cloud solutions, combined with a clear roadmap to get us where we and efficient cloud services platform for their core needed to be. That gave us the confidence that migration could be business performed smoothly without any disruption.” • CDW developed a strategic roadmap for public cloud migration via its own Managed Cloud Services delivering fast, accurate insight into cost savings and THE SOLUTION flexibility CDW introduced its own Managed Cloud Services to Premier Foods • Following analysis, a business case and implementation as a strategic methodology and toolset for the assessment of plan for migration of over 150 workloads to Amazon current and future cloud requirements. This included an analysis of Web Services (AWS) was developed the existing data center environment, comprising more than 200 • Migration activities are now underway, with full servers, followed by a comparison of the technical and commercial implementation of the public cloud solution to be attributes of various cloud service providers. completed by January 2021

PUBLIC (NON-CLASSIFIED) THE SOLUTION CONT. IT estate, helping it compile a full list of more sense to migrate them at a later servers, workloads and applications stage once the customer had realized Post analysis, CDW recommended a that would require migration to the the full value of its existing license. migration to Amazon Web cloud. This process enabled CDW to Services (AWS), underpinned produce detailed CDW Managed Services identified a by CDW Managed Services. The dependency mapping compiled into total of 160 workloads to be migrated recommendation was based on the a detailed technical report and then over to the new AWS public cloud potential for significant cost savings presented to the customer, providing environment out of the overall and the ability to scale infrastructure a clear roadmap for the suggested scope of servers. In addition, CDW provision up and down, according to approach to migration. contracted specialist consultant the changing requirements of Premier Lemongrass to manage the migration Foods’ business, adjusting monthly The assessment service also enabled of Premier Foods’ SAP infrastructure. fees at any given time. This flexibility CDW to identify which areas of A detailed platform design was would future-proof Premier Foods’ IT Premier Foods’ infrastructure was produced, covering areas such as operations, providing much-needed suitable for public cloud migration, account structure, security provisions scalability. and which would remain better placed and billing, along with technical on-premises. Certain assets, it was characteristics such as network During the assessment phase, CDW found, were tied to historical licensing infrastructure, tagging strategies, conducted an audit of Premier Foods’ agreements, meaning that it made monitoring and analytics.

OUTCOME Once migration is completed the enhanced level of enterprise innovations. In the longer term, new cloud services will deliver an support, at no extra cost, delivered future benefits will deliver new immediate reduction in operating through an arrangement with levels of automation in cloud costs for Premier Foods, amounting CDW as well as gaining access to a services, resulting in rapid to several thousand pounds a CDW account manager and highly agility. month, enabling the organization to accredited solutions architects invest those savings in innovation who along with a service delivery projects that add value. Premier manager, make monthly on-site Foods will also benefit from an visits to help it keep pace with AWS

KEY SERVICES USED

For more information please contact [email protected].

PUBLIC (NON-CLASSIFIED)