Pinnacle Group has moved its communications and IT infrastructure to Rackspace’s cloud-based services.
Pinnacle began using Rackspace’s services in 2015, with a private cloud covering 80 per cent of its core business applications. By last year, Pinnacle needed to revise its cloud strategy in line with changing business drivers.
The service provider firstly wanted to expand and develop its on-premise storage to cope with much greater data volumes and consolidate its siloed IT infrastructure.
Secondly, because Pinnacle often handles calls on behalf of housing customers, it needed to evolve its communications infrastructure to accommodate new channels such as web chat and SMS as well as traditional phone calls.
The final reason for its technology changes was Pinnacle’s 2017 management buy-out from its parent company, with the resulting need for separate IT environments instead of its previous shared private cloud platform.
For the outgoing former owner, Rackspace produced an entirely new and separate environment. Highly resource-intensive and motivated by the potential for scalability, the business opted for a multi-tenant, scalable environment which would let it cope with increased demand and business growth. Pinnacle, meanwhile, expanded into the original environment that had been vacated.
Tony Brown, head of IT, Pinnacle Group, said, “Rackspace offered us the commercial flexibility to adapt in a way that we wanted. With our partnership, we were able to shortcut the whole process and Pinnacle is now more agile. And by no longer needing to worry about the state of our IT infrastructure, we have the capacity to focus on adding value to the business.
“Rackspace’s expertise has been invaluable. Its managed service has levelled out the peaks and troughs to give us the flexibility and agility to act quickly to changing business needs and to focus on customer service. Without Rackspace’s support, the timescale and cost for this move would have been much greater.”