Case Studies

Indiana University is one of the largest state university systems in the United States, with nine campuses, 100,000 students, 7,000 faculty members, and 11,000 staff members. The university’s Auxiliary Information Technology (AIT) department had a hard time keeping up with the server growth needed to support services such as dining halls and residence centers. It also wanted to eliminate server failures that interrupted services and revenue flow. AIT turned to server virtualization using Windows Server® 2008 with Hyper-V™ and the Microsoft® System Center family of management tools. The department has whittled its physical servers from 150 to 32, has trimmed server deployment time by 90 percent, and can deliver higher availability and meet new service requests faster. The department is also saving U.S.$85,000 annually in hardware costs.

Costco Wholesale Corporation is a major international wholesale distributor with revenues approaching U.S.$70 billion. Costco began using virtualization technology in 2006 and has expanded its investment to include Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V™ and Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. With these tools, Costco can control IT spending, increase IT flexibility, and manage its virtualized server assets more efficiently.

Saint Raphael Healthcare System runs the Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven, Connecticut, which is renowned for excellence in patient care, customer service, and medical education. To maintain its competitive stature, the hospital must constantly introduce new patient and physician services, most of which require technology support. However, the hospital’s data center was approaching capacity and its staff was unable to take on more server management work. To reduce server-related work and increase business agility, Saint Raphael’s is using Hyper-V™ virtualization technology, part of the Windows Server® 2008 operating system. It’s using Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to simplify server management and Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 to provide easier Web-based application access to users. Saint Raphael’s can now quickly roll out new services.

Avanade is a rapidly expanding global IT consultancy firm with a growing number of professionals. Until recently, the IT department could not contain the equally impressive increase in servers. When Avanade deployed a virtualization solution with the Windows Server® 2008 operating system and Hyper-V™ technology running on Sun x64 servers, the company gained the performance, reliability, and scalability to virtualize as many workloads as possible, including resource-intensive 64-bit applications. Over the next five years, Avanade expects to avoid U.S.$835,000 in hardware expenses and rack-space charges, and to slow storage growth by 58 percent. Today, the IT staff can provision test environments in hours instead of waiting weeks for new servers, enabling the IT department to more quickly respond to business requirements, including the development of a new disaster-recovery center.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), the largest newspaper in the Southeast, was adding servers to its data center at the rate of over 10 percent a year. The data center was experiencing power and cooling capacity problems at a time of shrinking budgets. To lower costs, the AJC implemented the Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise Operating System with Hyper-V™ technology. The newspaper has dramatically consolidated its servers and reduced costs. In addition, its disaster readiness, change management, and testing capabilities are much improved. Servers are better utilized, and the IT infrastructure can better accommodate changes. IT employees expect to save a great deal of time on provisioning and maintaining servers. The AJC also uses Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to manage its virtualization landscape.

Banverket ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is the IT and communications services provider for Banverket, the Swedish rail authority. It also provides ICT services to national and international customers. Banverket ICT wanted to improve the agility of its data center and the delivery of virtual applications so that it could attract new customers and better serve existing ones. Since it deployed an integrated Microsoft® server, desktop, and application virtualization solution and began using Microsoft System Center products to manage its virtualized IT environment, Banverket ICT is on its way to achieving a more responsive data center. It is also providing better customer service by hosting non cluster aware applications as virtual machines in a virtualized clustered environment.

The SOK Group is Russia’s largest automotive components manufacturer and second-largest automobile producer. With more than a dozen industrial enterprises, including joint international projects with other manufacturers and distributors, SOK needs a highly reliable and accessible IT infrastructure. The company saw that it could enhance the reliability and flexibility of its IT infrastructure by using Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V™ technology to virtualize workloads and consolidate servers. Since deploying Hyper-V and Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, SOK has not only enhanced the reliability, scalability, and flexibility of its technology infrastructure, but also significantly reduced costs. The company now has the agility it needs to respond rapidly to constantly changing business opportunities.

Hostbasket is a Belgian hosting company that strives to keep its services fresh, innovative, and price-competitive. With success and growth, the company acquired a burgeoning number of servers, which required significant staff time to deploy and maintain. Hostbasket turned to virtualization to reduce its servers and server management workload. Using the Windows Server® 2008 operating system with Hyper-V™ technology, Hostbasket plans to create 300 virtual machines and retire 60 physical servers. More importantly, Hostbasket can quickly create new offerings, giving customers more options and greater control over their hosted applications. Hostbasket uses Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to simplify server setup and management. Because Hostbasket can better utilize its servers, it earns higher margins from virtual machines and increases customer application uptime.