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92% reduction in server footprint: Coop - A Converged Infrastructure Case Study

rparker| February 14, 2012
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NOTE: I received a few inquiries from our readers about the impressive numbers in these case studies and how they are determined. I did some deeper checking and I thought it important to let you know that the numbers and benefits in all our Converged Infrastructure case studies are the actual results reported by the company being profiled. In a few cases, calculations are made using HP TCO tools, but with full agreement and approval from the customer before any claims are made public.

 

CI-small.jpgIn this case study, I wanted to show that most companies are taking a building block journey to convergence following a practical progression >> consolidate (or standardize) >> virtualize >> automate. In this case, Coop will save millions over five years with virtualization on HP BladeSystem.

 

Coop is the second-largest retail group in Switzerland, operating more than 1,800 stores with a workforce of 53,000. As uninterested herds of sheep roam the steep, green Swiss valleys below the snow-capped Alps, down below at Coop’s data center in the city of Basel, the pressure is on the cooperative’s IT team to develop an IT strategy that can fulfill the company’s ambitious agenda.

 

“We needed to be able to react faster and deploy services faster,” says the company’s team leader of server solutions. “We need to build infrastructure at the most efficient cost possible. And we need to be able to host centralized IT services for our stores, while integrating IT services from new acquisitions.”

 

In this case, the Coop team members decided to address their challenges by consolidating, virtualizing, and automating their x86 server and networking environments with HP Converged Infrastructure technologies. They are migrating most services from rack-mounted servers to VMware vSphere 4 running on the HP BladeSystem. To further reduce complexity, they are using HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-port Modules in the BladeSystem enclosures.

 

The reduced complexity and total cost of operations (TCO) of consolidation on the HP BladeSystem can add up to significant savings. By running 450 servers as virtual machines, Coop could save total hardware cost-of-ownership of as much as 10.3 million Swiss francs (CHF) over the next five years (equivalent to $12.9 million USD)*.

 

Other benefits:

  • Threefold faster time to value on IT services due to infrastructure convergence with HP Virtual Connect
  • 92 percent reduction in server footprint from virtualization, yielding space for new services
  • 30 percent overall reduction in ports and cabling, reducing up-front cost and complexity
  • Up to 256 IT staff hours saved when deploying 16 new physical servers

This is a great illustration of how the value and power of HP Converged Infrastructure solutions across a large organization can be applied at the customer’s own pace and preference. To learn more about this story, read the Coop case study.

 

Thank you.

P.S. Did you see the NEW ProLiant Gen8 Annoucement? - Pretty cool stuff.

 

*Based on using for comparison purposes the total cost of operations of 450 HP ProLiant DL380 G6 rack-mounted servers vs. 450 virtual machines running on 32 HP ProLiant BL490c G6 server blades. Note that VMware licensing costs for the 450 VMs are not included in this analysis. Source: HP Rack to c-Class BladeSystem TCO Analysis Calculator on hp.com.

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