END USER INSIGHT
ad
of
Inf
ra
s
t ru
ctu
re, A
lfred H Knight
MINING COMPANY UNEARTHS
BEST PRACTICE SOLUTION FOR
INFRASTRUCTURE PERFORMANCE
W
Alfred H Knight (AHK) is a
UK-based mining and metals
enterprise that provides a
comprehensive range of
inspection and analytical
services for the mineral and
metal industries worldwide.
Matthew Underhill, Head
of Infrastructure, discusses
his role in the business
and how it implemented a
NetApp solution to simplify
its operations, as well as
the company’s priorities for
infrastructure investment
this year.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
What does your role entail
and what are the company’s
core objectives? How do you succeed in
maintaining an efficient
infrastructure?
As Head of Infrastructure, I look after
pretty much everything that goes up to
the point where the user can log in, that
includes Internet, networking, storage,
compute and virtualisation. A lot of hard work!
The company aims to provide analytical
services to the mining industry.
Can you describe the company’s
infrastructure and how it works?
We are very centralised in Liverpool.
We operate in roughly 30 countries
and we provide almost all of our
infrastructure over Citrix and
everything is hosted on NetApp.
We’ve got a really good team and
what we’ve been doing in the last two
years since I joined is going through a
real modernisation of the infrastructure
and maintaining it efficiently or
effectively is basically down to our data
fabric because you have to have your
data where you need it otherwise there’s
no point in having it.
So, by putting the best of breed
technology in place, we’re able to put
everything together and maintain it so it’s
about choosing your partners.
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