A relentless focus on growth
Cornerstone Building Brands wanted to improve technology operations after growing through strategic acquisitions. This level of growth meant more layers were added to the IT ecosystem: many data centers operating across more than 50 sites, numerous network architectures and multiple cloud environments. The company saw an opportunity to consolidate technologies, create new standards and modernize to achieve synergy goals. A new IT operations strategy was the only way forward.
Improving customer delivery with operational excellence
Data center consolidation was just one part of the overall end goal to transform the way Cornerstone Building Brands serves the market — and a holistic assessment laid the foundation for success. Insight used SnapStart — our proprietary discovery engine — to map all data center assets and dependencies, as well as identify candidates for the cloud.
Armed with this information, Cornerstone Building Brands leaned on Insight to migrate workloads to an Insight-hosted Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) strategic landing zone. The company has since realized a more modern way of building new workloads, leveraging the IaaS space and creating more operational efficiencies.
With Insight’s help, Cornerstone Building Brands is also strategically moving workloads to critical data centers that will remain within the company’s estate. Those workloads include mission-critical, revenue-generating applications that demand high availability, security and tight integration. This will drive improvement across electronic data interchange, order placement, revenue cycles and more.
Ensuring stronger security has also been imperative. With a once-diverse firewall landscape, the company is now simplifying management with a standardized firewall architecture across on-premises and cloud environments. This will minimize security gaps and better protect business assets.
Standardizing the network for better end-user experiences
Through this initiative, Cornerstone Building Brands has created a standardized experience for end users across North America, meeting the CBB Secure Network (SNOP) initiative by adopting Network as a Service (NaaS).
Key network objectives included:
- Reducing OpEx in network management, troubleshooting and outages
- Improving network performance
- Enabling proactive monitoring and maintenance
- Ending technology obsolescence
After a successful Proof of Concept (PoC) provided by Insight, Cornerstone Building Brands shifted from a multi-vendor environment to a single manufacturer as infrastructure is refreshed.
This initiative is designed to replace more than 4,000 network devices across the Cornerstone Building Brands footprint. A consistently reliable networking experience across company locations will reduce the chances of technology issues impacting production and distribution.
