Customer Case Study
Alecta
1/21/2008
Insurance Firm Uses Virtualization to Streamline Server Provisioning, Drive Agility
In business since 1917, today Alecta is the largest occupational pension provider in Sweden. The company's data center, located at headquarters in Stockholm, houses more than 100 older, underutilized servers. Alecta's IT staff deployed a Microsoft® virtualization solution to improve hardware utilization, streamline server provisioning, and increase agility in responding to business directives. The team replaced aging machines with servers running the Windows Server® 2003 R2 Datacenter x64 Edition operating system. Taking advantage of the operating system's unlimited virtualization rights, Alecta has increased the scalability of its virtualized infrastructure. Using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, IT staff now can provision servers in an hour instead of a week, providing unprecedented service levels to the organization.
Industry: Insurance Industry
Size: Large, 700 employees
Country: Sweden  Sweden

Customer Profile
http://www.alecta.com
In Stockholm, Sweden, Alecta provides occupational pensions worth SEK440 billion [U.S.$69.2 billion] for more than 1.7 million individuals and 28,000 companies. It employs 700 people and 300 consultants.
Business Situation
Alecta's aging, under-utilized servers consumed a disproportionate amount of resources to manage. The IT department wanted to increase hardware utilization and boost its responsiveness to business needs.
Solution
Alecta chose Windows Server® 2003 R2 Datacenter x64 Edition–based servers as its virtualization platform and deployed Microsoft® Virtual Server R2 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
Benefit
  • Cut server provisioning by 95 percent
  • Improved business agility
  • Increased server utilization
  • Reduced server maintenance
  • Simplified data center management
Software
  • Internet Information Services
  • Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
  • Microsoft Office System
  • Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007
  • Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007
  • Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional
  • Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition
Quote
"With unlimited virtualization rights, Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition is the most scalable, cost-effective, and reliable server platform for Alecta's large-scale virtualization project." Rikard Nilsson, Infrastructure Architect for Microsoft Products, Alecta