Williams & Fudge is an accounts receivable management firm, awarded as one of the Top 25 fastest growing company in South Carolina — and it’s all because the company decided to undergo a virtualization makeover.

The idea of virtualization came about four years ago when the company realized that they had no disaster recovery, and 12 boxes of data sitting in the building.  The owner had a dream about the building burning down, and nightmare that got him thinking.  The threat was real, and Williams & Fudge had to do something in order to be able to quickly recover from disasters if and when they hit.  They have about seven terabytes of data, relatively small compared to other companies, but that amount of data is still significant in a growing company like Williams & Fudge.

That’s when the company decided virtualization may be the key in helping the company grow as well as manage their data without having to break the bank.

Virtualization within reason

Philip Reynolds, Data Center Director at Williams & Fudge, sat down with Wikibon Senior Analysts Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman at VMworld 2013 on theCUBE.

Reynolds discussed that the company is housed in a building which used to be a cotton factory so the building itself, which is about 150 years old, already presents enough risks.  There, Williams & Fudge has VMware clusters for server and view desktops, all backed by an EMC VNX array with Cisco UCS as the compute platform to help them in case disaster strikes.  And they also have the same virtualizing equipment in a disaster recovery facility in case things get any worse.

As for the extent of Williams & Fudge’s virtualization, Reynolds stated that every server has been virtualized, even desktops.  Only the phone system has not been virtualized.

• Retiring the desktop

“We saw a lot of aspects of server virtualization could carry over into the desktop space as we saw desktops having the need for retirement.  We talked about four years ago when we started this transitions, we have about 160 employees at the time, now we’ve got 400.  So by virtualizing our desktop it allowed us to grow at a higher rate than I think it would without virtualizing our desktops and we also didn’t add any IT staff,” Reynolds stated.

Right now, all their desktops, its SalesForce and client support are completely virtualized while about 60 percent of its call center is virtualized.  But that’s where it’s headed especially when virtualizing desktops beats having to change machines in a 3-year cycle, which could greatly affect the revenue of the company.

As for Williams & Fudge’s disaster recovery plan, it uses EMC’s RecoverPoint and VMware’s vCenter Site Recovery Manager.  It was an added bonus that the owner of the company was willing to spend money to be able to get all their data back in case disaster strikes so the company has an RPO of 15-30 minutes and an RTO of less than five minutes.  Though Reynolds have not have performed recovery, he was able to use RecoverPoint to move VMs from one facility to another.  He was able to move six servers in 15 minutes.

Is virtualization right for you?

Reynolds’ take is, before a company jumps in the virtualization wagon, ITs should explore and determine what would work for them and what would be cost effective.  Williams & Fudge currently doesn’t have a compliance management suite as Reynolds is still looking for one.  He recommends that ITs should do thorough research and look for products that solves multiple problems.  He added that attending conferences, talking to other people, going to user groups, and leveraging social media helps in getting an idea of what products fits your business perfectly.

For more of Philip Reynolds interview, check out: http://youtu.be/UKXctnVRBZw