Nexeo Plastics is a globally recognized distributor of high-quality thermoplastic resins
Operating from 24 manufacturing sites, the company offers value-added services across various industries, including healthcare, packaging, automotive, wire and cable and 3D printing, among others.
We knew we needed a partner that would be with us from start to finish. That could not only serve as a trusted strategic advisor in deciding on the best IT solutions for our unique needs, but could help us implement those strategies and then manage the residual components once we were up and running
Ricardo Castro, CIO Nexeo
The Challenge
Nexeo Plastics spun off from its parent company in 2019 to create a new proposition for its customers globally. The company’s objective was to establish a lean IT team to design and implement a new infrastructure plan for its business worldwide.
The company’s new CIO brought Calian on board to plan and build their global IT strategy. The challenge was to determine whether the company would establish a traditional colocation datacentre infrastructure or an all-cloud solution to support their business objectives.
The Solution
Calian worked with the company’s IT leaders to define primary objectives and their strategic technology vision, including the delivery of enhanced security solutions and professional and managed services. As a newly spun-out business, Nexeo Plastics had the unique opportunity to begin the design process with a clean slate, enabling the company to build a long-term solution that would provide the performance, flexibility, agility and security it needed.
Calian acted as a strategic advisor, presenting several options, including technology roadmaps for both a traditional colocation datacentre and all-cloud infrastructure. As a result of the evaluation process, Calian executed an all-cloud deployment on an accelerated timeline, leveraging leading cloud providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Palo Alto’s Prisma, and Cisco’s SD-WAN powered by Meraki. Calian became Nexeo’s technology partner to fully implement, secure and manage the new IT infrastructure.
Connectivity planning for Nexeo’s 24 sites worldwide, including eight manufacturing facilities in North America, took place simultaneously. Cisco’s SD-WAN option was deemed the right fit for Nexeo’s international needs, providing optimal connectivity capabilities at lower overall costs, integrating effectively with cloud services and infrastructure, and offering natively integrated advanced security measures.
The Calian managed services team streamlined end-user migration efforts, enabling swift application availability without compromising security or user experience. Calian also designed and delivered a single sign-on (SSO) capability for Nexeo Plastics users, based on the Okta SSO solution. This supported the company’s access and connectivity needs, from Teams and SharePoint to Exchange and Outlook. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic’s challenges, Calian enabled Nexeo Plastics to manage remote working efficiently. The project required 24x7x365 dedicated attention, and the experienced and committed Calian engineers undertook an immense workload on a compressed timeline.
The Results
Working with Calian to expedite the infrastructure project efficiently, Nexeo Plastics was able to accelerate the separation from its parent company. By significantly reducing the project timeline to just nine months, the business was able to operate with an integrated IT strategy ahead of schedule. This not only gave Nexeo Plastics management added agility to execute their plans, but also saved significant legacy IT support costs.
Nexeo Plastics now operates with the benefit of a high performing, reliable, and secure infrastructure strategy. The company’s adoption of professional and managed services from Calian has also enabled its lean IT team to focus on wider strategic objectives. Nexeo continues to see cost-and-resources savings as a result of the Calian ongoing SOCaaS and managed services.
