Architecting an IT transformation for increased business innovation

GHY International is a leading provider of Canadian and U.S. customs brokerage services and international trade solutions. Headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the company employs 110 associates at nine branches across Canada and the United States.

Increased requirements for compliance and security


GHY is dedicated to offering the most reliable, customer-focused customs brokerage service available, handling compliance workloads, minimizing risk and enabling customers to operate efficient business models. “Following 9/11, the emphasis on security became much more marked, and we have also seen a considerable increase in compliance requirements and other regulations,” says Nigel Fortlage, vice president of IT and CIO at GHY International. The organization needed an IT infrastructure capable of tracking hundreds of thousands of shipments in near–real time as well as protecting and managing the data this type of activity generates. Moving forward, the customs broker wanted to refocus IT on delivering business value rather than just spending its time managing the existing infrastructure.


Transforming IT for business innovation


GHY International prides itself on running a highly efficient IT landscape and had been using IBM Power Systems™ technology as its main hardware platform for more than 20 years. In fact, GHY was one of the earliest midsize businesses to adopt server virtualization. With the goal of leveraging existing IT expertise in a more business-focused way, GHY engaged IBM in early consultations. According to Fortlage, “We didn’t start with the idea that we needed an IT architectural design, but it became clear from working with the IBM team that this was a key initial consideration. They helped us to develop one that met both our near-term and longer-term objectives.”

Since those initial conversations, GHY has been working through a multistage process over a nine-year period, consistently refining and improving its IT infrastructure approach to achieve its business goals. “Working with IBM through this IT transformation process, we’ve achieved IT cost savings and business value at each step of the journey,” Fortlage says. “This has enabled us to consistently move to the next evolutionary step and achieve new efficiencies with increased IT performance.”


Integrating for improved performance and reliability

Initially, GHY was running a wide variety of platforms and operating systems, including IBM System x®, IBM System p®, IBM AIX® and Microsoft® Windows® components. This resulted in inefficient and difficult-to-manage “islands of computing.” By integrating these systems onto a single IBM Power footprint and implementing systems management capabilities from IBM, GHY brought all of its IT elements together onto a single platform. GHY was also able to move from two separate backup systems to just one, minimizing the expense and simplifying the management of large amounts of data.

Efficiency achieved through automation

After GHY had applications communicating securely and reliably as a result of IT integration, the organization was able to efficiently automate entire processes from beginning to end—without any concerns over performance or security. Its automation efforts extended to include systems infrastructure management, which had a direct impact on allowing IT staff to focus its time on value-add projects as opposed to focusing on day-to-day system maintenance.


Increased governance and security

The increased visibility gained through integration and automation has allowed GHY to more effectively manage governance requirements. The team implemented a specific process for its governance strategy, consisting of three basic steps. First, the team reviews existing capacity capabilities against business requirements. Second, it performs a monthly and quarterly health check to evaluate system performance. Finally, at lease renewal, the team performs a comprehensive system evaluation to determine the need for architectural adjustments to address a new, desired set of requirements. Additionally, GHY has been able to achieve higher levels of security as a result of integrating onto a single IT architecture, moving its firewall into a logical partition on one of the machines because of the proven robustness and reliability of the solution.

Leveraging a private cloud approach

With an IT environment operating as a single resource with virtualized servers, storage and network infrastructure, GHY is now effectively running a private cloud infrastructure. Today, this environment is used as a single resource by platform, but the next planned evolution will involve operating the entire system as a single virtual environment, regardless of platform. The organization has also implemented VMware vSphere4, a cloud management platform, to manage the x86 virtualized Intel® operating environment.


Transforming IT into a driving force of business innovation

By embarking on this journey of IT transformation with IBM, GHY has significantly freed up its IT resources by reducing the time spent on server management from 95 percent to 5 percent. “What we did with the 90 percent of time gained back was refocus our human resources and allow them to apply their technology, knowledge and energy into providing solutions that helped the business,” says Fortlage. The IT team has been successfully generating customer-facing enhancements to GHY’s website, resulting in revenue growth and an improved customer experience—going from a 94 percent to a 96.7 percent customer satisfaction rating. In addition, GHY was a winner of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies program in 2008 and became a Requalified member in 2009 and 2010 and is the Consumer Choice for 2010 in the category of Custom Brokers in the city of Winnipeg, as tabulated by the Consumer Choice Award organization.

Fortlage adds: “Our new virtualized infrastructure, with the IBM Power 750 at its heart, gives us the extra capacity and scalability that we need to deal with predicted business growth. More importantly, it maintains our strategy to keep IT management simple and empower our team to consistently focus on driving business value.”