2 page Case Study - Posted 9/8/2008
Views: 495
Rate This Evidence:
Server Virtualization Improves Business Processes for Service Provider and Outsourcer
Wipro Technologies provides IT solutions and services to global corporations. To deliver its services more efficiently and help meet its ICT environmental sustainability goals, Wipro needed a robust virtualization solution. It selected Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise, Hyper-V™, and Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. The company virtualized 400 of its physical servers and optimized space and power use, helping it stay ahead of its competition.
Business Needs
Since its founding in 1980, Wipro Technologies has become the world’s third largest provider of business process outsourcing (BPO) services. The company has three data centers in India—in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune—and a disaster recovery data center in Chennai.
 |
These technologies optimize space and power use, provides quicker turnaround times for creating new and converting old servers, and enables us to meet our green ICT obligations and targets. |
 |
|
Prasanta Kumar Panda
Senior ICT Consultant and Virtualization RDP Project Coordinator, Wipro Technologies |
|
|
Locally and globally, Wipro Technologies provides systems and network integration, systems implementation, applications and software development, maintenance, BPO, and consulting services. It also undertakes research and development in these areas.
The company’s information and communication technology (ICT) environment supports more than 60,000 customers. Most external users are connected to its data centers by offshore-dedicated centralized networks. It also has a large number of centrally managed Windows®-based servers in its international operations.
To remain competitive, Wipro Technologies constantly searches for ways to deliver its services more efficiently and cost-effectively, and passes on the savings to its customers. The company wanted to reduce its hardware footprint through server consolidation, reduce ICT operational and maintenance costs, increase systems performance and user productivity, and provide the highest quality services to its internal and external users.
“Virtualization is the need of the hour and, with most of our infrastructure on Windows platforms, it was natural for us to look at the latest virtualization technology from Microsoft,” says Prasanta Kumar Panda, Senior Consultant and Virtualization Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) Project Coordinator at Wipro Technologies.
The company wanted to evaluate the latest virtualization technology not only for its own use, but also for its customers. In January 2008, Wipro Technologies selected Windows Server® 2008 operating system, the Hyper-V™ technology, and Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.
Solution
Over the course of five months, the company’s ICT department conducted tests using four high-end physical servers at its main data center in Bangalore. The company tested installation, network management, virtual machine management, host management, portal, migration, back-up, integration, fail-over, and monitoring. It also built virtualized versions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft SQL Server® 2005, and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.
Wipro Technologies’ ICT department is now able to view and manage all physical and virtual servers from one console using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Physical servers can be converted to virtual servers in minutes using the wizard feature in Hyper-V Manager, which provides a step-by-step set-up guide.
Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager enable ICT staff to virtualize a larger number of physical servers quickly and reliably. In addition, because Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager are built on Windows, the new systems integrated easily with the company’s existing Windows-based infrastructure.
“Integration with existing systems, especially Exchange Server, System Center Operations Manager, and Microsoft Office Communications Server—was a simple process,” says Panda. “We now have a low hardware footprint, even higher performance, and high availability. Our expectations from the Rapid Deployment Program have been met.”
Wipro Technologies plans to fully deploy Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager on 400 physical servers at its data centers, with a significant number to be converted by the end of 2008.
Wipro will use Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager enterprisewide. The company also plans to provide its external customers with a full range of desktop and server virtualization products and services by adding these products to its portfolio along with Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
Benefits
Through the RDP, Wipro Technologies has optimized its IT infrastructure by improving operational efficiency, which has generated significant time and cost savings. The efficient use of power through server consolidation has helped the company meet its own internal green targets.
“The streamlined user interface of System Center Virtual Machine Manager makes it easier to manage virtualized networks,” says Panda. “Our future plans include making this new technology available to our customers, who will also benefit from cost savings.”
- Reducing operational costs. Hyper-V is cost-effective because it integrates well with the IT infrastructure and requires no extra licenses for high availability.
- Creating room to grow. Wipro Technologies expects to accommodate further corporate growth without needing additional physical servers.
- Providing better service. Wipro Technologies can allocate cost savings from its reduced hardware footprint to the provision of more innovative and competitively priced services for its customers.
- Simplifying data center management. Hyper-V requires only one skill set to run both the virtualization environment and the Windows-based workloads. Task automation through the Windows PowerShell™ command line interface and scripting language allows Wipro Technologies’ IT department to more easily control system administration and accelerate automation.
- Reducing power consumption. By reducing its number of physical servers, Wipro Technologies lowered its power consumption, helping to achieve its goal of becoming a greener, more environmentally friendly business.
