Collaborating to deliver new hybrid cloud solutions

Netrix Global is a global technology services and solutions provider focused on delivering secure, scalable, and outcome‑driven IT services. Headquartered in the United States, Netrix Global supports mid‑market and enterprise organizations with managed IT services, cloud solutions, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and digital workplace enablement.

In 2025, Netrix Global acquired Ricoh ITS, significantly expanding its global managed services footprint and deepening its expertise across IBM Power, IBM i, cloud hosting, and Managed services. This acquisition strengthened Netrix’s ability to support complex hybrid cloud environments for customers worldwide while continuing the long‑standing delivery partnership Ricoh ITS had established with IBM.

“The acquisition of Ricoh ITS accelerated our ability to deliver enterprise‑grade managed services on a global scale,” says Nick Mattera, Vice President, Hosting Operations, Netrix Global. “It also allowed us to build on nearly a decade of collaboration with IBM.”

The relationship between Netrix and IBM is built on mutual trust and long‑term collaboration.

“We have a great relationship with IBM,” says Mattera. “We’re not just partners; we’re also vendors of one another’s solutions. IBM and its customers purchase and uses solutions we support, and we rely on IBM technologies to deliver high‑value services to our customers. The relationship is very deep.”

“As a managed services provider for IBM Power environments, Netrix supports IBM Cloud customers through a dedicated tile available in the IBM Cloud Catalog. This allows clients to migrate and deploy to a fully managed hosted solution with what Deepak Kohli, Netrix Global’s Field Chief Technology Officer, calls a ‘single hand to shake’ for their entire infrastructure.”

Each Netrix customer has unique business and regulatory requirements. In 2020, a long‑standing customer, a multinational insurance company, approached Netrix with a significant request.

The insurance company operated two European data centers where Netrix was managing its IBM i applications running on IBM Power servers. To reduce costs and improve operational efficiency, the insurer planned to shut down its on‑premises data centers and move workloads to the cloud.

Netrix was tasked with designing and executing this transformation.

While Netrix did not operate its own data centers in the required European regions, its close partnership with IBM made IBM Cloud® a natural fit. IBM already had established cloud data centers in Europe and offered IBM Power Virtual Server, enabling customers to move IBM i workloads without refactoring.

“The biggest advantage of IBM Cloud was that it was already built,” says Deepak Kohli, Field Chief Technology Officer, Netrix Global. “We didn’t have to start from scratch. We could layer in our managed services and provide 24×7 coverage. IBM Cloud made perfect sense.”

The stage was set. Now it was time for the real work to begin.

The migration began in July 2022. Moving IBM i applications from IBM Power Systems on premises to IBM Power Virtual Server on the cloud was relatively straightforward, in that it required no refactoring. Netrix was responsible for the overall migration, but worked closely with IBM to tap into expertise that only IBM could provide.

“We were familiar with IBM Cloud,” says Mattera. “We had deployed services within our own IBM Cloud instance for other customers. On the infrastructure side though, we hadn’t done any IBM Power Virtual Server deployments yet. So there was a bit of a learning curve, and IBM was there to help throughout, which was great.”

The insurance industry has strict governmental requirements for data management, including a provision that all data be stored for at least seven years. To accommodate this requirement, IBM called upon IBM Business Partner FalconStor. With the FalconStor StorSafe VTL solution, the team could convert physical storage tape drives into a virtual tape format and back them up to IBM Cloud Object Storage for easy storage and retrieval.

Since FalconStor’s VTL solution was already embedded on IBM Cloud, implementing it was relatively straightforward. “Again, it was a new platform for our engineers on the Power side,” says Mattera. “Once we got past that with help from FalconStor and the IBM team, we’ve become very comfortable with it.”

“So the learning curve, while it was there, wasn’t tremendously painful,” he continues. “There were a lot of lessons learned. Now we feel fully confident in deployments going forward.”

In September 2022, the insurance customer’s workloads were fully migrated and went into full production on IBM Cloud. The insurance company users are now able to connect privately from on-premises office locations to the hybrid cloud environment in Europe—running its IBM i applications on IBM Cloud while also subscribing to a variety of other independent software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
 

Today, Netrix Global is reaping multiple benefits from the successful implementation. It continues to enjoy a strong relationship with the multinational insurance company, which remains a satisfied customer. Not only can the insurance company continue to run the IBM i applications to which it is accustomed, but it also can focus on its core business rather than on maintaining and paying for IT infrastructure: with IBM Power Virtual Server, the company pays only for the services and bandwidth it uses.

By moving the insurance company’s workloads to IBM Cloud, Netrix Global has positioned the company to save up to 40% in annual data center housing and operating costs worldwide. What’s more, the elimination of the space and energy required to run those data centers has reduced the company’s carbon footprint says Deepak Kohli, Field Chief Technology Officer, Netrix Global

With FalconStor StoreSafe VTL in place, Netrix Global has enabled the insurance company to improve its data backup and storage capabilities with greater scalability and speed. The company is now able to meet its regulatory requirements for storing data for the long term and has the potential to help reduce the backup time for its insurance customers’ workloads by up to four hours.

Netrix Global has also developed new capabilities and skills in its IT managed services business, expanding its expertise of IBM Power systems into IBM Power Virtual Server environments. It also can apply its knowledge of FalconStor StoreSafe to implementations throughout the world.

The relationship between Netrix Global and IBM is stronger than ever. “The available diverse applications and resources within IBM Expert Labs services increases our chances to close even more opportunities,” says Mattera. “This is yet another game changer for Netrix .”

The implementation has opened doors not only to new possibilities in running IBM Power Virtual Servers in Netrix Global’s own cloud, but also the ability to offer it as a managed service in Europe. “The ability to operate within the IBM Cloud has given us a global reach that we never had before,” says Mattera. “It enables us to go after a whole new market segment.”

Another exciting opportunity is that of extending the reach of the Netrix Global cloud through collaboration with IBM Cloud. “Our own cloud is made up of physical infrastructure,” says Mattera. “So the intent would be to downsize the physical footprint of our data centers by utilizing IBM Cloud.”

“A customer with a global reach might want to have geographically diverse data recovery capabilities or a high-availability environment—availability in North America, production in Europe or the Pacific Rim, wherever it is. IBM Cloud gives us that flexibility,” he concludes.
 

Netrix Global is an engineering-led IT consultant and managed service provider with over three decades of experience. Our team of over 600 technical engineers is dedicated to solving problems across all business functions, with expertise in IT strategy, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, application development, and data & AI. Netrix offers a unique advise-deploy-run approach to ensure client success no matter the project’s complexity. Our mission is to be your trusted technical advisor, providing the people and technology needed to run modern, data-driven businesses that are always on and always secure. Learn more at www.netrixglobal.com. 

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, IBM Business Partner FalconStor is a leading provider of data protection optimization software, including FalconStor StorSafe VTL, that modernizes disaster recovery and backup solutions in hybrid cloud environments. The company was founded in 2000 and currently serves more than 1,000 organizations worldwide.