Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company (ECCBC) is one of the leaders in Coca-Cola bottling in Africa, present in 13 countries in North and West Africa. The implementation of a new ERP in such diverse locations led the company to go for a common infrastructure that was easy to manage and hardware agnostic. The positive experience over the last seven years has led ECCBC’s IT department to obtain significant savings and free themselves from the most tedious tasks. Thanks to SCC, a Nutanix partner, the company receives support in all instances where it operates, balancing workloads if necessary. The next step will be the adoption of AHV, the Nutanix virtualization solution.
| Hyperconvergence Centralized management of IT infrastructure in 13 geographically dispersed countries. | Modularity Ability to balance workloads between countries. | Sustainability Energy saving in territories where the power supply is sometimes not guaranteed. |
The Nutanix infrastructure was independent of the hardware in each location, working as a compact solution that allows centralized management. Also, unlike other manufacturers, Nutanix offers capillary support throughout the African territory.
ECCBC decided to deploy a new ERP (Epicor) to support bottlers in all Western countries, except for Morocco, Mauritania, and Algeria. In order to carry out this project in a short time, they needed to adapt the infrastructure of these countries. They chose Nutanix because it met the requirements they needed. The Nutanix infrastructure was independent of the hardware present in each location, working as a compact solution that makes centralized management possible. Also, unlike other providers, Nutanix offers capillary support throughout the African territory.
Knowledge and technological capabilities in Africa are not the same as in Europe. ECCBC, thanks to Nutanix and its partner, SCC, was able to install the pre-configured equipment in all countries with simple assembly instructions. No major incident was recorded, and the platform continues to evolve seven years after the start of this collaborative project. The work of this technological partner is essential to offer the necessary support in all countries. SCC assists in the management and operation of the Nutanix platform, helping to ensure that the deployment at each new location has been a success. The Nutanix Cloud Platform resides in Colt, and as a hybrid multicloud platform, it allows overflow in to Microsoft Azure. They use Nutanix Prism as their management console. Veeam Backup integrates with Nutanix and its AHV hypervisor to back up virtual machines and their data.
The company has more than 3,500 employees, has its headquarters in Casablanca (Morocco) and its head office is located in Barcelona, where it houses the data center. From here, ECCBC serves Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, São Tomé and Príncipe, Equatorial Guinea, and South Sudan. The implementation of Nutanix technology by SCC was completed in a record time of three months in the last six countries. Nutanix’s modularity allows balancing workloads between countries, as is the case in Ghana, where its remarkable growth is being taken over by teams from Liberia and Sierra Leone. ECCBC is proud of its commitment to sustainability, reinforced by Nutanix, which provides energy savings in territories where power supply is sometimes not guaranteed. Floods, storms, or fires in the data center are situations that are not so worrisome in more developed countries, but with which the IT department has frequently had to deal.
The high degree of satisfaction with Nutanix has led the company to maximize investment. The Nutanix Acropolis AHV hypervisor conflicted with the existing virtualization infrastructure. However, the bottling company is going to implement AHV in the medium term with the aim of achieving savings, which becomes essential in these uncertain times. At the moment, ECCBC doesn’t feel the need to expand the infrastructure, but to reinforce its efficiency. ECCBC are planning on evaluating Database as a Service (DBaaS) through Nutanix as an option for parts of Africa where they do not need a physical instance to host their ERP system.
With more than 5,000 employees, SCC is a strategic partner of the main manufacturers in the market. Their goal is to make their clients’ IT work in order to improve business results. They offer IT solutions and services (data center, hyperconverged infrastructure, managed services, networks and security, etc.), which allow long-term benefits to be reinvested in the business.