Medical Protection Society (MPS) protects and supports the interest of over 300,000 doctors, dentists, and healthcare professionals all around the world by helping them navigate the complex legal and ethical challenges of modern practice. The organisation’s IT team recently embarked on a project to minimise infrastructure waste, reduce shelfware and deliver an optimised user experience to staff. MPS were keen to consolidate and enhance their IT estate, unlocking value for the business. MPS chose to partner with Xtravirt to help them accelerate their journey to a more secure and performant infrastructure, gain more value and benefits from their VMware solutions, and resolve user experience issues impacting employees and their ability to meet the needs of their members.
Meeting IT and business objectives with certainty
MPS’s internal IT team needed to carry out a hardware review and refresh, whilst working in alignment with their business objectives to drive efficiency, optimise costs and deliver a greater user experience for employees and members. As well as consolidating their IT estate, MPS chose to work with Xtravirt to use VMware’s Horizon, NSX and Site Recovery Manager (SRM). These solutions were already available to MPS through their Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) and offered too much business value to be left as shelfware.
Explaining why MPS chose to partner with Xtravirt on this project, Val De Vogele, Infrastructure Operations Manager at MPS commented, “We recognised the value of working with a partner on this project, one that would enable us to bridge any skills gaps and ease pressure points within our own IT team. By partnering with Xtravirt, we knew we could improve our ability to consolidate and modernise our estate more quickly and keep business disruption to a minimum.”
Minimise shelfware, maximise value
Like many businesses, MPS was keen to realise the full value of the VMware solutions available through its ELA. As Val De Vogele explained, “The team knew that there were products available to them that had the ability to provide benefits for the wider organisation. Had we not chosen to partner with Xtravirt, we risked leaving many of our VMware licenses as shelfware.”
Medical Protection Society
We have continued to work alongside Xtravirt’s engineers and draw on their capabilities to support us through this period of transition. Not only have I been impressed by their technical knowledge and experience, but the way they have integrated and worked alongside our own team has made it a unique and positive experience
Andy Pickersgill
Lead Infrastructure Analyst - Operations, MPS
Business continuity and IT security reinforced
With protection of its employees and members a key priority for MPS, bolstering IT security was a key focus of the project. With the help of Xtravirt, MPS was able to implement several VMware solutions including VMware NSX and VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to protect employees against risk, improve the availability of applications and improve disaster recovery capabilities.
Providing an enhanced user experience with VMware Horizon
With a pivot to remote and hybrid working, MPS wanted to upgrade their environment, allowing for simpler and faster maintenance of desktop and server OSes. The work undertaken has delivered wide reaching benefits to the business. As Val De Vogele explains, “Thanks to the help of Xtravirt we have a new, fully compliant platform built on VMware Horizon. The feedback from our end users is so positive. They are enjoying faster, easier, and more secure access to the apps and data they require.” The MPS helpdesk has reported a 65% reduction in user experience issues being logged since the new platform went live and as a result, they have more time to focus on providing support to higher value projects.
A growing partnership that delivers continuous value
Medical Protection Society
In working with VMware and Xtravirt, we found better ways to protect our environment and have enhanced our disaster recovery capabilities.
Val De Vogele
Infrastructure Operations Manager, MPS
Commenting on the future hopes for the partnership between MPS and Xtravirt, Andy Pickersgill, Lead Infrastructure Analyst – Operations at MPS commented, “We have continued to work alongside Xtravirt’s engineers and draw on their capabilities to support us through this period of transition. Not only have I been impressed by their technical knowledge and experience, but the way they have integrated and worked alongside our own team has made it a unique and positive experience”.