How Arup went cloud-first with 1E

From cost to employee experience, physical data centers present organizations with various challenges. With 95 centers globally to oversee, it became a priority for Arup to find a more cost-effective and efficient solution, without disrupting employees. Arup’s ambition was to become a cloud-first firm and needed a solution to replace these servers.

Compliance is also vital for organizations like Arup. Without compliant devices, organizations become vulnerable to external threats. As such, strengthening the entire endpoint estate and maintaining a secure environment was a top priority for Arup. With thousands of devices to maintain, achieving compliance initially seemed like an impossible task.

While working to eliminate physical data centers and enhance the security of endpoint devices, it’s crucial not to overlook the importance of maintaining accurate device lifecycle data. Without this data, businesses face unnecessary spend when working to predetermined age-based device lifecycles. Many devices live beyond the estimated three to four years, requiring a simple refresh rather than retirement. With device performance insights, organizations can make data-driven decisions, extend device lifecycles, and benefit from financial and environmental improvements. Motivated to move away from age-based device management, Arup turned to 1E’s capabilities.

Lastly, optimizing service desk operations, eliminating digital disruptions, and reducing time spent on virtual desk-side support is also a priority for Arup. However, manually resolving digital issues for 18,000 employees is very time-consuming, especially when there’s other initiatives for the team to focus on. As a global organization with that many users, this was a crucial objective for Arup’s service desk teams to address.

With 1E, Arup eliminated those ninety-five servers without disrupting users, which was a massive accomplishment for their team. 1E Content Distribution for Microsoft Configuration Manager (previously named Nomad) provides an alternative to physical data centers. This helps Arup to reduce costs while maintaining a stable digital environment for 18,000 employees globally.

“It allowed us to decommission those servers without any operational impact.”
– Mark Burford, Operations Engineer, Arup

1E Endpoint Automation (previously named Tachyon Guaranteed State) also helped Arup on their compliance journey by automating several processes, providing visibility into end-user experiences, and maintaining security and compliance issues. Through these capabilities, Arup was able to create a secure environment for each device, regardless of location.

“1E’s technology has been instrumental in transforming how we manage device compliance, enabling us to efficiently ensure all devices are compliant. ”
– Rob Asher, Global Head of Service Management, Arup

With 1E, Arup can make consistent, informed, data-driven decisions surrounding device refresh cycles. This helps to cut costs on unnecessary device purchases. Data-driven device lifecycles also support Arup’s sustainability initiatives, continuously reducing their environmental impact.

“Making data-driven decisions around device refresh helps us be more proactive. We’ve used the information that 1E has given us to help us address issues before users report them.”
– Rob Asher, Global Head of Service Management, Arup

1E integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow, providing real-time incident investigation and remediation without ever having to leave the ServiceNow platform. Arup can retrieve information and remediate issues across the entire endpoint estate without escalating tickets or disrupting end users.

“We hit 5,000 instructions issued when a year before that was a couple of hundred…that’s probably the most significant thing we’ve achieved to date.”
– Rob Asher, Global Head of Service Management, Arup

• Streamline costs
• Reduce 95 servers to 0
• Seamless move to the cloud, without operational disruption
• Achieve device compliance goals
• Replace time-consuming manual tasks with automations
• Enhance the digital employee experience (DEX)
• Extend device lifecycles, reducing unnecessary costs
• Enhance sustainability initiatives
• Make data-driven decisions
• Execute 5,000+ monthly instructions via ServiceNow
• Reduce the mean time to resolution (MTTR)
• Create the opportunity for IT teams to focus on other initiatives