4-page Case Study - Posted 9/8/2008

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HotSchedules

Workforce Scheduling Provider Increases Capacity and Competitiveness with Virtualization

HotSchedules has been providing online labor-scheduling services for the restaurant and hospitality industry since 1999. With dozens of accounts including national chains like P.F. Chang's China Bistro, HotSchedules hosts more than a quarter of a million users and has been experiencing annual growth over 100 percent for several years. HotSchedules needed an agile and scalable IT environment that could respond quickly to growth opportunities. The company deployed the Windows Server® 2008 operating system with Hyper-V™ virtualization technology to consolidate its server environment, reduce costs, and maximize network performance. By hosting up to 19 virtual machines on each physical server, HotSchedules increased its growth capacity while cutting power costs 77 percent and enhancing the company’s competitive position.

Large restaurant organizations would see our product and inevitably they would like it.... Their concern was always whether we could scale to meet the needs of all their restaurants. Ray Pawlikowski President, HotSchedules

Situation

Located in Austin, Texas, HotSchedules provides online labor-scheduling systems and integrated workforce productivity tools for the restaurant, retail, hospitality, and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1999 by technology developers and restaurant veterans who understand the employee scheduling and management challenges that are unique to the industry.

HotSchedules develops tools that provide restaurant management staff with real time access to their schedules and scheduling preferences from any computer with an Internet connection. With HotSchedules workforce productivity tools, businesses can eliminate scheduling hassles, provide real time communication, increase employee retention, and save managers time and money. HotSchedules gives employees the flexibility to easily trade shifts and request time off, while making it easy for managers to reconcile production requirements with employee schedule requests, track and analyze labor costs, and control overtime.

With its powerful remote employee scheduling and labor management tools, HotSchedules has become a leader in its market and enjoyed abundant success in a short timeframe. HotSchedules provides labor scheduling applications for hundreds of clients, including regional and national chains like P.F. Chang’s China Bistro. The HotSchedules Web site (www.hotschedules.com) hosts more than a quarter of a million users, with approximately 4 million individual user sessions a month. For several years, the company has experienced annual growth that exceeds 100 percent, without any indication of slowing down. 

Significant growth presents enormous opportunities—and challenges. HotSchedules wanted to sustain its robust growth, but as the company acquired more customers, demands on its data center grew. As HotSchedules deployed more physical servers to support its expanding network, it quickly ran out of space and began experiencing rising power costs, both from increased consumption and escalating energy costs. In 2003, HotSchedules was paying an average of U.S.$3,000 per month in energy bills; by 2008 the cost had grown to more than U.S.$11,000 a month. 

“As we’ve expanded, the number of servers we need to implement has grown, and our data center costs have escalated,” says Matt Woodings, Chief Technology Officer at HotSchedules. “It was actually limiting our ability to grow.”

The company continued to take on more customers and deploy more applications, but it began to encounter higher costs associated with the time it took to provision and configure new servers, which could take up to a week for a new account. As it earned more large national accounts, HotSchedules had to meet increased requirements for high availability and application performance. “Large restaurant organizations would see our product and inevitably they would like it,” says Ray Pawlikowski, President of HotSchedules. “But the first question they would ask is, ‘is it scalable?’ They know we’re a relatively small business, so their concern was always whether we could scale to meet the needs of all their restaurants.”

Senior management at HotSchedules realized the company needed to evaluate and fine tune its current hardware and software assets to maximize network performance, reduce costs, and make room for continued expansion.

Virtual Machine manager 2008 is going to allow for a huge amount of testing possibilities, and in the production environment, we’ll be able to provision new virtual machines extremely easily. Matt Woodings Chief Technology Officer, HotSchedules

Solution

HotSchedules recognized that it could address these key business challenges with a virtualization solution. The company evaluated several technologies, including VMware ESX, but it was already committed to and familiar with Microsoft® technologies—running its server environment with the Windows Server® 2003 operating system. Relying on an established relationship with Dell Inc., the company ultimately accepted a recommendation to participate in a Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) for Hyper-V™, a virtualization feature of Windows Server 2008.

“VMware would have been a very large financial outlay,” says Woodings. “Our learning curve would have been very high, and we would have had to hire consultants to bring us up to speed. We’re a Microsoft shop, and Hyper-V was a cost-effective solution with everything in place. We were confident we could integrate it easily with the technologies we were already using.”

In the course of evaluating Hyper-V, the company recognized the value of other features in Windows Server 2008. For instance, HotSchedules wanted to improve its Active Directory® capabilities and enhance its in-house security, and as part of the deployment, upgraded its Active Directory service and group policies using Windows Server 2008. By relying on their familiarity with Microsoft technologies, network administrators at HotSchedules easily integrated Hyper-V into the existing environment. By using the Server Core feature of Windows Server 2008 to run the majority of virtual machines, HotSchedules improved the performance and consolidation ratios of its virtual environment.

HotSchedules worked with Dell Infrastructure Consulting Services to deploy Windows Server 2008 to build high-availability failover clusters on two Dell PowerEdge 2950 III physical servers. The company credits the Dell hardware with contributing to the success of the virtualization deployment. “The Dell PowerEdge servers are extremely configurable, with the fastest and highest bandwidth processors and enough memory to allow great room for growth,” says Woodings. 

The HotSchedules IT department worked with Dell to configure Hyper-V to host 19 virtual machines on each high-availability cluster node. It is vital for HotSchedules to keep its online network up and responsive, so that its customers and their employees always have access to the labor scheduling systems. The company can use the high-availability failover cluster to assure maximum uptime and performance of the applications that run on each virtual machine.

The company intends to manage its virtual environment with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. However, no release-candidate version of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 was available during the RDP, so HotSchedules managed the virtualization deployment using management and provisioning capabilities integrated with Hyper-V.

“The basic management software that comes with Hyper-V has been working like a charm from day one. It’s extremely easy to use and has enabled me to get everything off the ground,” says Woodings. “We are still waiting for the release candidate of Virtual Machine Manager 2008, but we did some limited testing with the beta version, and we were very excited at what it was able to do. Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is going to allow for a huge amount of testing possibilities, and in the production environment, we’ll be able to provision new virtual machines extremely easily.”
 
When HotSchedules deploys Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, it will provide real-time network management, workload monitoring, and rapid provisioning throughout its virtual environment. Going forward, the company plans to virtualize its entire application server environment, including Web hosting, Web services, and middle tier caching. HotSchedules intends to consolidate its server infrastructure by close to 90

With Hyper-V, we can now fully compete on price, while keeping our existing competitive advantages of better products and better service. Matt Woodings Chief Technology Officer, HotSchedules

Benefits

By deploying Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology, HotSchedules has created the business agility it needs by increasing its growth capacity and enhancing its infrastructure performance, reliability, and flexibility. It has significantly reduced operating costs, increased the efficiency and productivity of its staff, and developed a competitive advantage that will help the company realize its anticipated growth. When HotSchedules deploys System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to manage its virtual environment, it anticipates creating a more agile infrastructure that will enable the company to respond quickly to growth opportunities.

Enhanced Growth Capacity

With Hyper-V, HotSchedules can support future growth without huge overhead. The company plans to consolidate its data center from 40 physical servers down to four, essentially multiplying its capacity by 10 times, making its current growth rate much more realistic, and improving the margin for growth in the data center. “Historically, we’ve doubled in size each year, and this year we’re expecting to triple our numbers,” says Pawlikowski. “With Hyper-V, we’ll be able to meet that opportunity with 12 physical application servers instead of 120.”

Better Infrastructure Management

Before HotSchedules virtualized its server environment, it would often take weeks to provision a new server, but the company can now fully deploy a new server in a day or less. “Before, we had to think carefully about whether we really needed a new server,” says Woodings. “Now, we can just say, let’s throw another virtual machine in the mix, and there it is, instantly helping out.”

With the simple management capabilities in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, HotSchedules will be able to quickly monitor, integrate, and manage its network. That will free development and management staff to perform valuable tasks developing new solutions for HotSchedules customers.

In fact, HotSchedules has used Hyper-V to create a test and development environment, a need the company could not fill in the past. “A lot of things fell into place,” says Pawlikowski. “By using Hyper-V to gain more capacity and faster provisioning, we could start devoting staff and technology resources to testing and development.” 

Reduced Costs

HotSchedules reduces power, space, and technology hardware costs as it continues to virtualize its server environment. For a recent installation at a very large account, HotSchedules expected to double the size of its data center, but with Hyper-V, it avoided having to buy more physical servers and saved U.S.$60,000.

“The physical servers we were using cost about $3,500,” says Woodings. “A Hyper-V node might be $7,500, but I can get 19 virtual machines on one physical machine. Our number one cost has been power in the data center. We currently spend about $11,000 a month, but with Hyper-V on energy efficient Dell PowerEdge Servers we expect to reduce it to $2,500.”

Efficient Deployment

With support from Dell Infrastructure Consulting Services, HotSchedules accomplished in just a few months what might have taken a year. HotSchedules took advantage of Dell’s Structured Design Solution, with continuous assessment, design, and validation, accelerating its virtualization effort and saving time and money. “Dell Infrastructure Consulting Services analyzed our environment, related it to hardware and software, and developed configurations and design specifications,” says Woodings. “And they imparted all that knowledge to us, so we can manage and maintain the solution ourselves.” 

Competitive Advantage

Using Hyper-V technology has helped HotSchedules streamline its processes and maximize its margins, making the company more competitive. “We have 2,400 restaurants online now, and some bigger chains out there might have 1,000 to 1,500 restaurants. Two of those would more than double our current load,” says Pawlikowski. “With Hyper-V, we can go after the larger clients more easily because we can talk confidently about scalability.”

While HotSchedules has enjoyed success in its market, it has recently faced competition from new providers that offer lower prices. By adding scalability and flexibility to its server network with Hyper-V, HotSchedules can meet its competitors’ pricing while maintaining its leadership position with innovative, reliable services. “With Hyper-V, we can now fully compete on price,” says Woodings, “while keeping our existing competitive advantages of better products and better service.”

Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
Together, Hyper-V technology-a key feature of the Windows Server 2008 operating system and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 provide a reliable virtualization technology and comprehensive management solution that make it easier for customers to virtualize their IT infrastructure and reduce costs. With integrated administration, customers can use a single console to centralize management of a heterogeneous virtual machine infrastructure; increase physical server utilization; rapidly provision new virtual machines; and provide dynamic performance and resource optimization of hardware, operating systems, and applications. Both of these technologies easily plug into existing infrastructures, so companies can continue to use their current patching, provisioning, management, and support tools and processes. This combined virtualization technology and management solution also provides great value, because customers can make the most of their IT professionals' skill set, the breadth of solutions from Microsoft partners, and comprehensive support from Microsoft.

For more information, go to:
www.microsoft.com/hyper-v
www.microsoft.com/scvmm

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about Dell Infrastructure Consulting Services products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.dell.com/ICS

For more information about HotSchedules products and services, call (866) 753-3851 or visit the Web site at:
www.hotschedules.com