VMware to Openstack migration success story
A success story from GARSA
The challenge
We had to deal with a migration from VMware Horizon, the virtualization solution that GARSA had with its previous provider, to Openstack, the open source platform on which Adam relies to create and manage cloud infrastructure services, in addition to improving the service and providing this client with more flexible, geo-replicated, personalized and cost effective solutions, while being more accessible.
The solution
In a very limited time, we successfully configured the platform within Adam Madrid’s Openstack virtualization, maintaining the VMware support that GARSA already had. Some 130 users already work within our infrastructure at full capacity, with a solution replicated in the DPCs in Barcelona, and a rack that interconnects GARSA systems with our IaaS.
What began as a small agency in Alcorcón, Madrid, more than 40 years ago, has ended up as GARSA, a company with more than 1,200 workers and 17 offices, leader in the outsourcing of banking and real estate services, as well as in projects for Asset Management services or for any other BPO of activities in which they can add value.
GARSA focuses on streamlining processes through a balance between robotization and humanization, with a strong commitment to technological innovation and a very experienced IT team that guarantees the efficiency, adaptability, scalability, security and cost effectiveness for all its integration projects.
Currently, its clients range from large financial entities and real estate companies that require a service in relation to the granting of loans and mortgage credits, to people or borrowers who buy a home and request a loan to finance it.
From a small agency to a leader with little competition
GARSA is just a few years away from its half century anniversary. It started as a small agency in Alcorcón run by Eloy Porres (father) and dedicated to document processing and vehicle management. In 1991, the Porres family joined forces with the Martín-Camuñas and created GARSA in order to begin working with banks, which caused them to begin to gain volume.
In 2008, as a result of the economic crisis in Spain, GARSA explored the banking outsourcing sector and this caused them to grow, especially in the autonomous communities of Madrid and Andalusia. Currently, more than 1,200 people work in GARSA and the company already has 17 offices in Spain.
Although its activity focuses mainly on mortgage management, its services include asset and real estate management, real estate development, business process outsourcing (BPO), and vehicle management. Their clients are of two very different types: on the one hand, large clients such as companies, banks, real estate entities, and large property owners, and on the other, individual clients, whom they normally help to finalize their mortgage processes.
Their positioning in the market as a large agency means they have few competitors, but those they do have are very large (Indra and Grupo BC, for example). In this regard, what differentiates GARSA from its competitors is the human value of the processes, their accessibility for their customers, without losing sight of the use of technology.
“Adam is not a billing machine, but rather a supportive partner so that we all win. They are the first data center where I can leave the servers that I don’t use idle for a few hours in order to reduce costs”
Marcos Gómez Rico, Director IT
An increase of between 250 and 300 gigabytes each month
Due to the nature of its business, GARSA handles a high volume of documents that, for legal reasons, must be kept for at least five years (which the business usually increases to eight years to offer greater guarantee). This represents a monthly increase of between 250 and 300 gigabytes of storage in different formats and for different documents.
As such, in this particular implementation, storage capacity and agile management of resources was the main challenge, but behind these aspects was cybersecurity, that is, the need to protect data against external attacks.
“What matters most to me in a partner is support and creativity in technological solutions”
Marcos Gómez Rico, IT Director
The search for an accessible partner in Madrid and Barcelona
Given the specific characteristics of the service required, GARSA’s requests and queries to their previous data center and IaaS service provider received cold responses that tended to demand payment in advance and to start with “no” first. Over time, they began to detect that the infrastructure was not of sufficient quality to support more complex projects, and they started searching for another partner, rather than a supplier, with whom they could grow together in an economy of scale model.
As they tell us, in Adam they found the combination of innovative solutions that use the most advanced technology, with the accessibility, creativity, flexibility, support and cost effectiveness they were looking for. The fact that our centers were located in the two largest cities in Spain, Madrid and Barcelona, allowing geo-replicas of their systems with the same provider, was what finally convinced them.
The aspect of cost effectiveness is key for GARSA, since its growth model involves allocating more and more company resources to data storage. As such, the competitiveness of our prices, even allowing servers to be left idle to reduce costs, was a crucial factor added to the continuous improvement of our solutions.
Successful migration from VMware to Openstack with full guarantee
The main challenge of this project was that GARSA’s previous provider used VMware software to build and manage its cloud infrastructure services, but Adam’s IaaS is based on Openstack, an open source platform with the same functionality.
Despite the great initial challenge, the platform configuration within the virtualization of Adam’s OpenStack was a success. Some 130 users are already working within our infrastructure at full capacity and without having detected any problems due to this migration. VMware was perfectly mounted in an open source solution such as Openstack on several Adam servers and so GARSA can maintain the VMware support they already had.
After a period of support, the IT team and GARSA users are completely autonomous when configuring more machines in Adam’s IaaS because they already know how our cloud works.
“With fewer resources we are providing a better service”
Apart from security, we have already mentioned how important the reliability of the data is for GARSA, that is, being able to find it in the shortest amount of time possible and at any time, in an automated way. In this way, employees can spend more time serving customers and providing them with a more human service, and less time on tasks that can be performed by a machine.
According to GARSA, this has improved substantially after the migration: they have gained agility and are running at full capacity thanks to Adam’s cutting-edge resources. Before, they had been setting up new resources on their previous provider’s infrastructure, and they were still getting bad service, so with us, they are getting better service with fewer resources.
Added to this is that they have been able to do without the previous ticket system and can now resolve their requests and queries directly with our support team or with any other Adam team, 24 hours a day, and in a more human, accessible and fluid way.
“With the way in which we have configured the platform, we continue to have all the guarantees of VMware support within Adam’s Openstack virtualization. We have 130 users working on this infrastructure at full capacity”
Sergio Tabarés, Head of Systems
Future challenges: data security and process automation
One of the challenges that GARSA faces is cybersecurity, and this affects the IT strategy. Legally, the company is obliged to preserve its clients’ documentation, as we have already seen, and to preserve it in a secure way, while making it easy to find it, which requires a large investment in cutting-edge technology.
The pace at which technologies evolve means that something that serves you now will be obsolete in a few months, so adopting a correct strategy for its implementation is also a challenge for a company like GARSA.
“We have lost the red tape we had with our previous provider; now I speak directly with the systems department and they assist me, listen to me, think and offer me alternatives”
Sergio Tabarés, Head of Systems