 "GLOPORE IMS Powers Aquent's Offshore Studio")
Aquent, a marketing and creative staffing agency, providing professionals with freelance, contract, try-before-you-hire, and full-time job opportunities with top organisations, recently set up its second offshore studio in Bangalore powered by GLOPORE IMS (Infrastructure Management Service).
Having experienced success in this main line of work, Aquent has expanded its bouquet of services to include consulting, on demand marketing tools, multi-lingual communication services and onshore and offshore design studios. Its first offshore studio was established in Mumbai, India in July 2003.
Growing client base fosters the need for an IMS
Part of Aquent’s client acquisition process in these offshore creative services revolves around demonstration of its IT infrastructure capabilities in terms of high availability, network performance, security and business continuity. Growing client base, extended working hours and increasing demands from clients for higher data protection and IT service availability meant that Aquent had to further focus on building a more resilient state-of-art IT infrastructure that could be managed efficiently on a daily basis.
Aquent, with its limited in-house capabilities, was clear about the need for a highly available and secure IT infrastructure for its growing business needs, but was unable to translate its business requirements into technology. The then existing heterogeneous MAC and Windows platform, as well as the short time frame available for setting up the IT infrastructure at its Bangalore studio made the task even more challenging. The challenge for Aquent was to find an IMS provider who would bridge the information gap quickly, map the company’s growing IT infrastructure needs to that of generic, creative and publishing industry segments and commission the entire IT infrastructure within a short period.
The CTO recommends GLOPORE IMS
Recommended by the company’s CTO himself, Aquent approached GLOPORE IMS to overcome its technological challenges. After a detailed requirement analysis through extensive discussions with Aquent offshore business management team, GLOPORE IMS presented them with multiple technology options that covered all aspects of IT infrastructure including physical network infrastructure and availability, file and print services, network security, data storage and backup and uninterrupted power supplies.
The most appropriate option was chosen and GLOPORE IMS deployed the solution in structured stages of build, test and rollout to ensure each infrastructure component was customised, configured, and tested. GLOPORE IMS also employed adequate controls to ensure that the project was on track in terms of schedule, quality and cost, with minimal risks.
G. Jayaraj, director-Offshore Studios, Aquent, Bangalore said, “Applying its homegrown, time tested ‘PLAN-DESIGN-DEPLOY’ (PD2) methodology that is based on industry best practices such as ITIL, MSF and PMBOK, Glopore IMS quickly provided Aquent with multiple technology options in ‘easy to understand’ visual and textual mediums that appealed greatly to Aquent staff who all had minimal IT exposure.”
Quicker time-to-market
The deployment has helped Aquent achieve quicker time-to-market for its offshore studio services at Bangalore.
According to Jayraj, “GLOPORE IMS provided Aquent with multiple solutions that reflected their strong understanding of our business as well as their ability to establish a flexible IT infrastructure that could be scaled up as per our growing needs and helped us set-up a state-of-the-art IT infrastructure that ensures uninterrupted service to our global clients. GLOPORE IMS management has been very professional in their approach and they have done a wonderful job for Aquent, Bangalore studio.”
Aquent staff can now focus on their core tasks, improve personal productivity and confidently pitch for newer business opportunities from a global client base.