Angara Technologies Group conquers the information security market with Nutanix solutions

INDUSTRY

Information security services

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• A single platform for customer and internal services
• Simple scalability to keep up with business growth
• Ability to dynamically allocate data center resources
• Flexible management of resource pools for different departments
• Consistent performance over a wide range of workloads
• 56% faster allocation of test environments for new projects
• Reducing the complexity of administration by 37%

SOLUTION

• Nutanix NX G5
• Nutanix NX G7
• Nutanix AOS
• Nutanix PRISM

Applications

• MS Exchange
• Zabbix
• Service Desk
• 3CX IP telephony
• A wide range of information security solutions from partners

Angara Technologies Group uses the Nutanix hyperconverged platform to drive business growth. The company’s portfolio includes solutions from 114 partners, including services for their implementation and technical support. Angara Technologies Group became the first among the fast-growing IT companies in Russia to become an official user of the Nutanix platform. They use the system to serve their customers: deploying development and test environments and hosted information security services. In addition, Nutanix provides enterprise applications for over 200 employees.

CHALLENGES

Angara Technologies Group was established in 2015 as a system integrator in the field of information security. Initially, it used a classical infrastructure based on servers, storage systems, and networking equipment. However, almost immediately it faced the limitations of such an architecture: the first was associated with the inability to have linear scalability, the complexity and long

time required to expand the data center following the growth of the business. In 2017, Angara Technologies Group entered the TOP-10 of the fastest growing IT companies in Russia (according to CNews). Since their own data center was used to deploy and test information security solutions in the interests of customers, the timing for the allocation of IT resources became business critical. Limitations or too prolonged allocation of resources delayed the start of projects and negatively affected their scalability. Taking into account their extensive development plans, which included the creation of new business directions, the expansion of the service portfolio, the opening of regional offices, and the provision of managed information security services to customers, Angara Technologies Group decided to radically modernize their data center.

“The explosive growth of our business and the increased capacity of our company have led to the need for a new web-scale infrastructure, highly performant and reliable, with a software-defined architecture,” said Nadezhda Pruchkina, CIO of Angara Technologies Group.

SOLUTION

The hyperconverged infrastructure was fully in line with the company’s needs. First, it is based on a software-defined approach, which provides the best opportunities for development and the addition of functionality in the long term. Secondly, it integrates storage and processing functions, as well as some network functions. This reduces the complexity of the data center and the effort required to manage it. It simplifies scalability: processor capacities and storage capacities expand as new servers are connected to the cluster.

“We looked at several systems from various vendors and ended up opting for Nutanix, as this platform is easy to manage, fully automated, and provides full analytics. It is notable for its high compatibility and the possibility of “seamless” migrations between hypervisors, which is important for us as an integrator working with a variety of partner solutions. In turn, as a provider of information security services, the qualities provided by Nutanix, such as resiliency and security are extremely important for us,” noted Nadezhda Pruchkina.

In 2017, Angara Technologies Group deployed a cluster of 4 nodes based on Nutanix G5 software and hardware solutions. The project was the first implementation of Nutanix in Russian companies that supply information security services. Corporate IT systems used in operations were transferred to the virtualized environment: mail, IP-telephony, Service Desk, accounting, and other systems. The data center also serves regional divisions. About 60% of its capacity is used directly by production units: it hosts test and development environments for partner solutions and provides resources for project tasks and for the provision of support and technical support services.

“Initially, we used the embedded Nutanix AHV hypervisor, but for better compatibility with a variety of partner solutions, we switched to the VMware vSphere hypervisor, while fully appreciating the advantages provided by Nutanix, such as platform independence and flexibility in choosing a virtualization system,” emphasized Nadezhda Pruchkina.

In 2018, Angara Technologies Group, through the service provider Angara Professional Assistance, launched a new service, the provision of Managed Security Services, which is also hosted on the Nutanix platform. Relying on its capabilities, the company continued its active development: by 2020, revenue had grown by more than 3 times compared to 2017, amounting to 3.19 billion rubles. The number of employees has more than doubled. Such rapid growth required additional IT resources, for which in 2019 and 2020 Angara Technologies Group consistently expanded the data center with Nutanix, implementing a pay-as- you-go service model for the physical infrastructure.

“Excellent scalability is one of the main benefits of Nutanix. When approaching the limits of the current configuration, which in our work is mainly concerned with processor capacities, we just add one more server. The expansion of the cluster and the addition of new resources is automatic and does not require additional settings. In addition, excellent visualization and predictability allow us to make expansions in advance, avoiding degradation of performance or the inability to provide the required capacity,” said Nadezhda Pruchkina.

Angara Technologies Group now uses a 6-node cluster in a mixed configuration with HDD and Flash storage devices. Within it, 217 resource pools are allocated for various departments, in aggregate using more than 1000 virtual machines, about half of them are in constant use. Nutanix technologies became the basis for the next generation data center, which was able to support the exponential growth of the company from its early stage of development to its leading position in the information security market within the country.

“Dynamic, actively developing information security companies like ours need powerful and flexible solutions for the successful development of their business. The Nutanix infrastructure has helped us grow vigorously on our own, as well as enabling us to quickly and efficiently meet the challenges posed by our customers,” concluded Nadezhda Pruchkina.