Case Study: CooperVision Gains Flexibility and Strategic Focus with Centrilogic
CooperVision is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of soft contact lenses and related products and services. The company, based in Rochester, NY, sells its products in over 100 countries and has won numerous awards including Contact Lens Product of the Year at the 2013 Optician Awards in England and a Gartner 2014 award for Supply Chain Innovation. CooperVision’s primary data center in Rochester supports the company’s core ERP and other enterprise systems, operations in 36 countries, and roughly 95% of revenue-driving processes.
Data center operations strategy
In 2014, when approaching the expiration of its current data center lease, CooperVision’s Sr. Director of Global IT Services, Steve Baxter, decided it was time to rethink the near-term and long-term data center strategy. Continuing to manage its data center needs internally was no longer an economically sensible position as the company planned for greater efficiencies and a tighter IT-business alignment. “We don’t want to be in the data center business any longer and we also don’t want to be tied to a specific facility to support our global IT needs,” Baxter says. “It’s not a strategic use of our funds to invest in the caliber of facility we need now and in the future. We also wanted to free up our internal resources to focus on business challenges, not data center facility management.” In evaluating vendors, Baxter sought out a partner that would provide the ultimate flexibility in providing a solution to address CooperVision’s unique and immediate requirements. Baxter also needed a partner that had a strong global presence, to support CooperVision’s presence internationally.
Working with Centrilogic
Centrilogic’s nearby 22,000 square foot facility in Rochester was an attractive alternative compared with CooperVision building a new facility. With a portfolio comprised of managed services, cloud hosting, and professional services, Baxter was confident that Centrilogic could support CooperVision’s migration to any future services beyond co-location.
Centrilogic’s ability to provide a higher level of redundancy and resiliency to the business was another key factor in the decision. CooperVision signed a 60-month co-location contract with Centrilogic in November 2014. Centrilogic is providing 32 cabinets of co-location space in a private cage configuration, power, as well as a portion of CooperVision’s network circuits.
Expected benefits
With Centrilogic as CooperVision’s data center partner, internal IT will be well-positioned to help the business meet revenue goals and efficiently manage new opportunities such as its recent acquisition of Sauflon Pharmaceuticals. “We’re a fast-growing company with consistent year-over-year growth,” Baxter says. He foresees the following benefits to IT operations and the business:
- Critical uptime for operations and new software: Centrilogic is hosting the infrastructure for CooperVision’s 24/7/365 manufacturing and distribution operations in the United States, Belgium, and in the UK, its global warehouse management system, and global financial and ERP systems. CooperVision will benefit from Centrilogic’s recent expansion of its Rochester data center, a multi-million upgrade featuring an additional 5,300 square feet, advanced cooling, and UPS technologies, and a power utilization efficiency (PUE) rating of 1.2. With CooperVision in the midst of replacing 75% of its core systems, a facility that is engineered to 99.999% uptime is critical. “Downtime for us can equate to millions of dollars an hour,” Baxter says. “We’re confident that Centrilogic will help us maintain the strict uptime we need to stay productive.”
- Staff optimization: Better use of IT staff is another near-term benefit. Baxter is excited to free up his senior engineering resources to focus on projects and high-value business-facing activities.
- Flexible provisioning of services & solutions: In time, CooperVision will also benefit from Centrilogic’s extensive experience in consulting, managed services, and cloud computing to fulfill future IT demands and requirements. “It’s really important that we work with a provider that will adapt to how we want to work, instead of forcing us to mold to their processes,” Baxter says.
- Global consolidation: CooperVision may choose to transition its additional four data centers around the globe to Centrilogic, which owns facilities in Hong Kong, the UK, Canada, and the US Virgin Islands.
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