CASE STUDY

HQW Aerospace

With many critical IT functions still being controlled by their former parent company HQW Aerospace essentially needed to build a brand-new infrastructure from scratch to achieve IT independence.

30% faster infrastructure re-build has huge bearing on independence success

Specialists in the design and manufacture of super precision ball bearings, world leader HQW Aerospace UK (formerly The Barden Corporation) boasts an impressive 70-year heritage supplying state-of-the-art products for demanding environments. Their bearing solutions are critical to medical systems, vacuum technology, and aerospace applications.

After a former parent company planned to close the Plymouth plant, HQW Aerospace was acquired by precision bearing manufacturer HQW Precision GmbH. HQW now faced the immediate challenge of building a brand-new IT infrastructure to operate independently within a tight 6-month deadline.

Industry:

Manufacturing

Organisation size:

300+ employees

Solutions:

Cloud solutions, data centre & networking

The challenge

The acquisition presented a 6-month deadline to retire existing off-site systems and ensure the necessary on-premises infrastructure was in place to allow their IT to fully return to the UK. This involved orchestrating the repatriation of the business’ entire data archive from Germany to HQW’s Plymouth site, which would need new infrastructure to host and secure the data.

For an IT team of only four people, this seemed like a monumental undertaking in such a short timeframe. The new infrastructure would need to be easily managed and highly intelligent, reducing unnecessary burdens on the team whilst ensuring they had the right tools to take back control.

The approach

HQW Aerospace UK immediately contacted Advania for expert guidance. Initially keen to make use of legacy Dell equipment to reduce costs, they wanted to identify whether any of their existing technology was still fit-for-purpose.

Advania conducted a full investigation into the plausibility of harnessing existing infrastructure and orchestrated in-depth workshops to establish what gaps would need to be addressed.

The investigation revealed that more replacement was needed than originally anticipated, but buying new hardware would turn out to be more cost-effective in the long run. This enabled consideration of modern solutions that would deliver even greater efficiency and manageability.

The solution

Advania delivered HQW the comprehensive infrastructure independence they needed, including:

A hyperconverged infrastructure that consolidated compute, storage, and hypervisor, virtualising 40+ physical servers onto a much smaller hardware footprint.
Modern wireless network implementation with HPE Aruba solution creating a more cost-effective and easier-to-manage network.
Complete data migration from Germany to Plymouth, including recovery of servers thought to have been lost.
Extended network deployment to a second site with wireless access points and full SD-WAN solution ensuring warehouse integration with main plant.
Technology asset disposal to decommission legacy Dell equipment and recover residual value to offset new hardware costs.

The new infrastructure also enabled HQW Aerospace to operate a more flexible hybrid cloud and extend their resources into various public clouds as required.

The outcome

The infrastructure independence project delivered exceptional results:

Completed 30% faster than planned with all on-premises infrastructure ready two months before the critical deadline.
Achieved substantial cost savings through hardware consolidation, reduced power consumption, and smaller physical footprint.
Enabled complete IT self-sufficiency through expert-led training and skills handover ensuring the four-person team could manage the entire estate.
Delivered enhanced flexibility through hybrid cloud implementation providing access to collaboration tools and applications anywhere, anytime.
Provided free hypervisor through Nutanix Acropolis, avoiding costly VMware licensing still controlled by former parent company.
Established ongoing resilience through Monitoring as a Service, Backup as a Service, and on-demand support contracts.

The Nutanix hyperconverged solution successfully consolidated 40 physical servers down to just one, providing colossal space savings, scalability for future growth, and greatly reduced power consumption.

“Advania were instrumental at every stage of the project. As well as building and configuring the Nutanix solution ready for deployment, they project-managed the swift migration of all our critical data from the German site to Plymouth, including from one server we thought we’d already lost.

They also assumed control of the supply of HP client devices to our UK site, taking this responsibility back from Germany to ensure our access wasn’t restricted by the acquisition.”

Tom Parsonage

Group IT Manager, HQW Aerospace UK

The future

Following the successful infrastructure independence, HQW Aerospace UK is now operating as a fully self-sufficient business alongside HQW Precision GmbH in Germany, backed up with modern, scalable IT infrastructure positioned to support future growth.

The company is now looking to extend Advania’s support to their European operations, demonstrating confidence in the partnership and approach that delivered such successful results within critical timescales.

Our impact

Faster completion

Completed 30% faster than planned with all on-premises infrastructure ready two months before the critical deadline.

Cost savings

Achieved substantial cost savings through 40+ physical servers virtualised down to just one and reduced power consumption.

IT self-sufficiency

Enabled expert-led training and skills handover ensuring the four-person internal team could manage the entire estate.

Hybrid flexibility

Delivered enhanced flexibility through hybrid cloud implementation providing access to applications anywhere, anytime.