Edipower

Energy Provider Cuts IT Costs and Supports Business Goals with Server Virtualization

Edipower, one of Italy’s major energy providers, requires continuously reliable information systems to integrate its services, support its business processes, and generate and distribute energy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But as the company’s IT infrastructure grew to 120 servers, it became complex and difficult to manage. Edipower wanted to cut IT management costs, reduce the number of physical servers it operated, and optimize system flexibility to best serve its business requirements. Using the Windows Server® 2008 operating system with Hyper-V™ virtualization technology, the company consolidated its server environment and streamlined the deployment of new services. By developing its virtualized infrastructure, Edipower has lowered costs, reduced downtime, saved energy, optimized 24-hour information services, and aligned its IT processes to its business goals.

 

Situation

A major energy producer in Italy, Edipower supplies Italian consumers with approximately 24 billion kilowatt-hours of power per year. Held by Edison, A2A, Iride, and the Swiss Atel, Edipower serves a 7.1 percent market share of Italy’s national energy requirements, manages 1,200 employees, and generates approximately U.S.$3.1 million (€2.4 million) in annual net earnings. More than 10 percent of the power generated by Edipower is from renewable sources.

To help generate and distribute energy, Edipower relies on a comprehensive IT environment to effectively integrate management and productivity applications, control systems, meter energy, and support office automation tools. At its offices in Sesto San Giovanni (Milan), Edipower operates two data centers that provide services ranging from domain management to providing backup and antivirus functions, as well as a company intranet that runs business-critical applications.

With 120 physical server computers in two 40 square meter spaces, the IT infrastructure at Edipower had started to become difficult to manage and maintain. For one thing, the system was not standardized. Edipower recognized that its IT environment had become too large and complex to be managed effectively and efficiently in a traditional manner. The company also wanted to cut back on the number of physical servers it operated, improve server performance, and optimize system flexibility and maintenance to best serve its business requirements.

The server situation used to be critical. Today, with Hyper-V, we’ve provided the business with a uniform, high-performing IT infrastructure that is easy to manage and maintain. Gianluca Fusco Information Systems Manager, Edipower

“Edipower’s continued and consistent growth brought equally exponential growth in terms of its infrastructure, but not always in a linear manner,” says Gianluca Fusco, Information Systems Manager at Edipower. “We needed to reduce the high cost of operating and managing such a large number of servers, optimize incorrectly developed logical services, and make it quick and easy to introduce applications whenever the need arises by making certain hardware is not a limiting factor for starting new projects.”

The Computer Information Systems department at Edipower works to keep the company’s goals for its IT processes aligned with its overall business strategy. “We function as business partners, rather than just service suppliers, which means that we don’t just propose solutions, but that we actively seek out the right technology solution for the company so that the IT component becomes an enabling factor in the company’s success,” says Fusco.

Edipower must distribute power to its thousands of customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so the IT department has to provide reliable, accessible, and absolutely continuous information services for the company. To make those services more efficient and effective, the company wanted to cut datacenter management costs, reduce machine down time, conserve space and energy, and streamline the configuration and deployment of new server environments. In 2007, Edipower decided to start on the path to virtualizing and consolidating its servers.

Solution

To demonstrate the project’s value to the enterprise, Edipower’s general management displayed a strong commitment to the entire initiative, despite this being the company’s first experience with virtualization. The company chose the Windows Server® 2008 operating system with Hyper-V™ virtualization technology for its greater degree of reliability, scalability, and ability to network with its information systems. Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V virtualization technology also provided the right integration with the company’s existing applications, including Windows Server 2003.
 
The first phase of the project, executed according to Edipower’s typical procedural and formal specifications, lasted four months and involved 20 servers. Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Microsys, Edipower created logical nodes for supplying services and cut back on the number of physical machines. “Our collaboration with Microsys provided a winning formula that supports Edipower and allows it to obtain high-level performance from its information systems,” says Fusco.

Microsoft and Edipower pooled information at every stage of the project, thus enabling Edipower to use the most up-to-date technology possible at all times. To provide centralized server management, monitoring, and backup, Edipower used Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, and Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager. According to Edipower, the relationship it has created with Microsoft is extremely valuable and has helped the company build a wide-ranging road map for optimizing its infrastructure and applications. “The entire project answers Edipower’s needs, above all in terms of evolution over time, based on new Microsoft-provided solutions,” says Fusco.

The second phase of the project follows a road map based on other Windows Server 2008 functions. By the end of 2008, Edipower expects that efficiency will be optimized and the Computer Information Systems department will be able to quickly restore services in the event of malfunctions.

Benefits

With Hyper-V virtualization technology, Edipower simplified its server management and developed a uniform IT environment with logical blocks providing services to the various applications. The company has lowered the costs of maintaining its data centers, streamlined system maintenance and reduced downtime, and aligned information processes with its business goals. “The server situation used to be critical,” says Fusco. “Today, with Hyper-V, we’ve provided the business with a uniform, high-performing IT infrastructure that is easy to manage and maintain.”

Significantly Lower Costs, Reduced Downtime

By virtualizing 20 servers with Hyper-V, Edipower saved approximately U.S.$45,000 (€35,000 per year) in just the pilot phase of the project. In addition to hardware savings, the company cut the setup time for new servers by 50 percent.

With virtualization, when a physical machine goes down and ordinary maintenance is required, we can shift the workload from one server to another. The end user is not aware of the change, and service is not interrupted. Gianluca Fusco Information Systems Manager, Edipower

The new infrastructure eliminates downtime. If a server malfunctions, system administrators receive a report from System Center Operations Manager, and can immediately reactivate the service on another host. And because IT can provide maintenance rapidly and efficiently, the system is more reliable and critical situations can be avoided.

Optimized 24-Hour Service

Edipower requires that the services provided by its Computer Information Systems be continuously operative. By applying virtualization to its server environment, Edipower can make the most of a truly dynamic infrastructure, enabling the enterprise to run productively 24 hours a day, every day of the year.  

“Edipower’s plants need to be checked every 15 minutes. With Hyper-V we can guarantee that the IT service we provide our business users is equally efficient,” says Fusco. “With virtualization, when a physical machine goes down and ordinary maintenance is required, we can shift the workload from one server to another. The end user is not aware of the change, and service is not interrupted.”

Better IT Alignment with Business Needs

According to Fusco, a primary role of the Computer Information Systems department is to support Edipower’s business. IT professionals at Edipower function as demand managers in application terms, in addition to being infrastructure technicians. “With the time-savings we’ve obtained from virtualization, our IT staff, with their internal and external systems analysts and consultants, can now focus on strategic tasks and future processes,” says Fusco.

Energy Savings

Edipower continually encourages awareness of electricity consumption among its customers and society at large. By consolidating its server environment, Edipower reduced power consumption in its datacenters, helping to meet the company’s great emphasis on environmental responsibility.

Microsoft Virtualization
Microsoft virtualization is an end-to-end strategy that can profoundly affect nearly every aspect of the IT infrastructure management lifecycle. It can drive greater efficiencies, flexibility, and cost effectiveness throughout your organization. From accelerating application deployments; to ensuring systems, applications, and data are always available; to taking the hassle out of rebuilding and shutting down servers and desktops for testing and development; to reducing risk, slashing costs, and improving the agility of your entire environment—virtualization has the power to transform your infrastructure, from the data center to the desktop.

For more information about Microsoft virtualization solutions, go to:
www.microsoft.com/virtualization   

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 Microsys products and services, call 02 303 707-01 or visit the Web site at:
www.msys.it  

For more information about Edipower products and services, call 02 890391 or visit the Web site at:
www.edipower.it