A luxury retail brand set out to bring public cloud speed and flexibility in-house, building a private cloud foundation to modernise security, strengthen resilience, and give their technology teams the agility to keep pace with the business.
The organisation’s existing environment was spread across multiple sites and the dispersed infrastructure footprint added cost and complexity to daily management, creating friction. Increasing demands were being placed upon the IT function, but provisioning new virtual machines involved lengthy lead times that slowed down those data analysts and developer teams who depended on IT to move quickly.
Security was another area of focus. The organisation recognised that traditional perimeter-based defences, whilst familiar, were no longer sufficient to protect a modern, dynamic environment. As the threat landscape evolved, so too did the need for a more granular, zero trust approach to security – one that could isolate workloads and contain any potential exposure, rather than relying on a single defensive boundary.
For a brand where agility is a commercial advantage, IT was being seen as a constraint rather than an enabler. The organisation knew that its IT infrastructure needed to evolve and its ambition became clear: To create a private cloud environment that delivers the speed, self-service capability and flexibility more commonly associated with public cloud – but on their own terms, within their own four walls.
Xtravirt was engaged as a strategic partner from the outset, working closely with the organisation’s IT leadership team. The result was a greenfield deployment of VMware Cloud Foundation, established across two data centres to provide a resilient, consistent infrastructure platform with built-in redundancy.
Network modernisation was central to the delivery. By deploying VMware NSX, Xtravirt enabled IP mobility and stretched networking between sites – so workloads could move seamlessly during failover without manual reconfiguration. This same NSX foundation became the vehicle for transitioning the organisation to a zero trust security model, using micro-segmentation to place protective boundaries around individual workloads rather than relying on perimeter firewalls alone.
As an early adopter of the VMware Security Services Platform, the customer worked with Xtravirt to develop the security processes and oversee the initial wave of application onboarding. This phased approach ensured a controlled, low-risk transition that set the foundation for a sustainable long-term rollout.
Throughout delivery, Xtravirt worked in close collaboration with the organisation’s programme teams, identifying dependencies early, managing competing priorities, and ensuring the project stayed on track. Post-deployment, the Xtravirt Managed Services (XMS) team stepped in to provide 24×7 escalated support. Working in close collaboration with the customer’s own teams, the XMS team is on hand to triage, investigate, and resolve incidents end-to-end, from initial alert through to corrective action.
Agility delivered – VM deployment time was reduced by 50%, enabling data analyst and developer teams to provision resources when they need them. IT is no longer a bottleneck in the path of business progress.
Zero trust security – The transition from perimeter-based defences to micro-segmentation via NSX has fundamentally strengthened the organisation’s security posture. Individual workloads are now isolated and protected, reducing the potential blast radius of any security incident.
Business continuity assured – With dual data centre deployment and IP mobility through NSX, the organisation now has genuine cross-site resilience. Workloads can be recovered and continued without the manual effort that previously made disaster recovery scenarios a source of risk.
Infrastructure rationalised – Consolidation through VCF enabled the organisation to halve its data centre footprint, delivering tangible ongoing cost savings alongside a simpler, centrally managed environment.
Speed at scale – Network resource scaling is now 54% faster, meaning the infrastructure keeps pace with demand rather than constraining it. Where provisioning once meant waiting, it now means doing.
Stakeholder confidence restored – With a modern, centrally managed foundation in place and Xtravirt providing ongoing support, the organisation’s IT leadership is well positioned to engage with the business as a strategic enabler – and to plan confidently for what comes next.
