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• 2007

S&T Czech Republic helps Vitana with Server Virtualisation

Cost savings, higher productivity and shorter provision times

Growing demand for computing power drastically increases operational and administrational costs of corporate computer centers. However, businesses have found a way to achieve significant savings while maintaining the required performance – through server virtualisation. In a survey organised by VMware* approximately a half of surveyed IT managers reported a 30 percent reduction in server hardware cost and 30 percent improvement in server provisioning time. “Server virtualisation is a question of efficiency. Operating costs may represent up to 70 percent of total costs of ownership of IT infrastructure. That is why businesses choose virtualisation to help them to cut down costs as much as possible and gain productivity advantages,” says Christian Rosner, CEO S&T AG. Even when using the most up-to-date IT technology, only 10 percent of the computing power can be used if virtualisation is not in place. At the same time the maintenance costs remain the same as if the IT technology was fully utilised.

Project Goal: A modern IT Infrastructure with lower costs
Vitana, one of the largest Czech food manufacturers, which is owned by the Norwegian multinational corporation Rieber&Son, confirms positive experiences with virtualisation. The company has opted for virtualisation in order to achieve operational savings as well as increased workforce productivity. “We decided for the virtual platform, because our former server structure was complicated and in terms of its administration was too much of a burden for our IT staff. Moreover, the lifecycle of many servers was coming to its end and the maintenance costs represented unnecessary burden to our budget,” says Michal Horak, IT Operation Manager of Rieber&Son. The company also required modern IT infrastructure that would be capable of meeting the future demands of a dynamically developing international company.

Prior to switching to virtualisation Vitana ran some 38 physical servers. Thanks to virtualisation the number of servers has been reduced to 19 so far. Server virtualisation still continues within the company. “We plan to use 23 virtual servers that will run on three physical servers. During server consolidation several servers have been put out of operation and others moved to another locations,” Horak adds.

Personnel can be employed otherwise
The main advantage Vitana has drawn from virtualisation is the simplification of corporate IT structure. For example, the company has achieved savings by avoiding purchases of new physical servers in many locations. “Also, thanks to virtualisation it is not necessary to buy new components for technological upgrades or expand the existing numbers of servers. Best of all, we have freed up some capacity in human resources – our IT specialists can focus on administration of corporate systems instead of maintaining local infrastructure,” concludes Michal Horak, IT Operation Manager in Rieber&Son.

An increase in the productivity of co-workers
In a survey carried out by VMware, an increase in workforce productivity by as much as 30 percent was reported by 31 percent of respondents. Purchase of IT technology is another area where, due to virtualisation, can be achieved savings amounting to 30 - 40 percent. “Virtualisation enables to run the necessary number of servers from a single physical machine. Purchase costs of new hardware are therefore dramatically reduced.

In a similar way S&T has also reduced 130 physical servers to 6 at the Austrian TV and broadcasting company ORF and virtualised 140 servers of the Energie AG Oberösterreich. One of the most extensive virtualisation projects completed by S&T in the region of Central and Eastern Europe is virtualisation of information systems for Koper Bank in Slovenia.

* VMware Survey: VMware Customers Report Significant Benefits:
• 60% report more than 30% improvement in provisioning time
• 45% report more than 30% reduction in server hardware cost
• 31% report more than 30% improvement in IT staff productivity as a result of virtualization
• 26% report more than 30% reduction in data center energy costs

Source: VMware survey that questioned 2,265 of their customers: http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/resources.html