Infrastructure Simplification Helps Metrojet Travel Light and Fly High

The challenges Metrojet faced are two-layered: both visionary and operational.

Metrojet finds itself in a young business aviation industry, where there are rooms for improvement in terms of technology use. However, given the limited IT resources available, Metrojet struggles with having a long-term vision to its IT development and digitalisation evolution.

On a day-to-day basis, Metrojet is limited by an infrastructure that is hosted with an overseas IaaS provider, leading to consequences such as limited control and flexibility on our data, network bandwidth and speed limitations, vendor lock-in and delayed response – further stressing a small IT that team in an organisation that strives for service excellence inside and out.

The immediate challenges to address were to take back control of the infrastructure, as well as implementing measures that would accelerate data protection, improve business continuity, and disaster recovery across the geographies Metrojet operates in.

Riding on a long-term partnership with HKBN JOS since 2019, the process began with a casual discussion and sharing on Metrojet’s daily IT needs with the HKBN JOS team, where HKBN JOS picked up and came back with a proposal on the best foot forward.

"In HKBN JOS we found someone we can rely on and trust in – our previous vendor operated like a vendor, while HKBN JOS was a true partner – to know that someone got our back gives you confidence and peace of mind to focus on what truly matters." said Adrian Wong, IT Operations Manager, Metrojet Ltd.

HKBN JOS’ one-stop solution encompassed pre-sales consultant services, installation and implementation services and data center services, but first began with a thorough audit of the existing infrastructure and operating environment to access gaps and avoid wastage.

The subsequent implementation of HPE SimpliVity, which combines server, storage, network and virtualisation, addressed Metrojet’s legacy, complex data centre problems, while greatly alleviating the load on maintaining the infrastructure – a critical consideration given the management resources available within Metrojet.

The advanced data management services for critical workloads for data efficiency and protection comes with built-in native backup and disaster recovery (Rapid DR) solution, greatly enhancing Metrojet’s resiliency. Rounding up the solution was a VM-centric management approach, as well as a hosting provided and managed by HKBN JOS in their 24/7 secured and certified compliant data centres – resulting in a setup that is high-speed, powerful, simple and efficient yet at the same time secured

The AI-enabled data handling features came out-of-the-box with HPE SimpliVity, and kept Metrojet’s space consumption to a minimum, thereby ensuring storage resources efficiently utilised, enhancing the organisation’s backup capability, and giving the computing power a much-appreciated performance gain. 

Infosight, another AI analytics tool included, enhanced the infrastructure’s visibility, predictive analytics, proactive wellness alerts and VM resources utilization, all keeping Metrojet’s operation ticking with issues flagged and handled before they become problems. 

Metrojet currently has 40 servers running with room for further growth, allowing them to keep longer retentions and the flexibility of having a backup policy for each datastore and a separate backup policy for the same VM. 

For network security, the next-generation firewall implemented provides VPN capabilities, traffic prioritisation, static and dynamic routing, network protection – features needed for today’s business operations. This means Metrojet can feel safe giving employees remote access to corporate services, direct traffic to allow critical services operate at higher priorities, and a firm control of their own network, and how it interacts with the outside world.

Improved data accessibility

With the help of system integration, data accessibility becomes easier for people in the Metrojet organisation. As data is king these days for any industry and business discipline, Metrojet is better positioned for future competition.

Better internal communication

Enabled by improved connectivity and streamlined communications, teams and business functions were able to have more frequent dialogs and collaborate better. As an organisation, Metrojet is now able to share and converse more that were previously difficult, costly, or just too time-consuming to do so.

One-stop service

By having all of the data in one place, they become easier to access, share, but also to manage, especially with the streamlined configuration procedures, which goes a long way in simplifying IT operations.