ABP UK partners with ANS to modernise its infrastructure with Azure migration
ABP UK (ABP) is a leading food processing company supplying fresh and frozen meat and meat-free products in the UK. ABP continues to drive innovation in every aspect of the business, from collaborative partnerships with their customer base to industry-leading practices in processing and product development.
The Challenge:
ABP wanted to modernise its infrastructure by migrating on-premise workloads to Microsoft Azure. This project is aimed to mitigate the risk of running end-of-life hardware, introduce automation, increase security, and gain full visibility of IT costs.
The Solution:
To fulfil their objectives, ABP was looking for a qualified partner with proven experience in cloud migration strategy and execution.
After evaluating multiple partners, ABP awarded the cloud migration to ANS for their extensive experience handling similar projects. ABP felt ANS understood their requirements correctly and showed confidence in successfully completing the project. ABP did not just want a transactional relationship with the vendor; they were looking for a strategic partnership and felt ANS demonstrated this quality.
After the migration, ANS will provide ABP with ongoing management and optimisation of their Azure platform through ANS Co-Managed Cloud and Cloud Centre of Excellence (CoE). This includes 24/7/365 access to UK-based cloud experts, technical and financial insights to control costs and access to a pool of functional engineers on demand.
To enhance the company’s security posture, ABP will receive 24/7/365 advanced threat hunting and governance through Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service from the ANS UK-based Security Operations Centre.
Regarding the partnership, Rich Easton, Implementation & Cyber Security Manager at ABP, commented: “From the outset of our data centre migration to Azure, our collaboration with ANS instilled a sense of confidence and expertise. They immediately demonstrated a deep understanding of the journey we were embarking on.”
“Meeting the team responsible for managing our migration further reinforced our initial choice of ANS. Their professionalism, knowledge, and unwavering commitment were evident, ensuring not only a successful migration but also providing comprehensive support for the subsequent years. This dedication was pivotal in maintaining the ongoing success of our project.”
The Outcome:
As ABP continues to grow, Azure will allow them to be more scalable and onboard new sites quicker than with dedicated servers. This migration will also help them be more agile in meeting customer and supplier needs whilst reducing the man-hours required to maintain systems thanks to PaaS and SaaS offerings.
Azure will give them a simplified technology estate, resulting in cost savings and improved collaboration by bringing together disparate IT teams. With Co-Managed Cloud, apart from supporting the customer 24/7/365, ANS also trains and transfers skills to the ABP team to enable them to use the public cloud better and get more out of it. The ABP IT team now feels supported and looks forward to learning and developing new skills in Azure.
The Azure migration also aligns well with ABP’s security and business continuity strategy. They’re confident that the migration will reduce the risks and threats from operating legacy hardware and enhance their disaster recovery capabilities.
Looking ahead, Matt Hyland, Infrastructure Manager at ABP, says: “ANS has been like another member of the team; the working relationship has been excellent, and they have worked hard to understand the business and our requirements, delivering the right solution for us and the future. We’re looking forward to the benefits Azure Co-Managed Cloud offers us in the future.”
Gary Allwood, IT Director at ABP, commented: “The partnership with ANS is positive and came at a great time. Attentive and value add at all levels of engagement; I’m positive about what the future holds.”
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