Strong Customer Demand Leads WM-Data to Choose Red Hat

Industry: IT Solutions Provider
Solution: Software:  Red Hat Enterprise Linux, VMWare
Hardware: IBM Bladecenter HS20, HS40 and HP BL45p
Benefits:
Rapid scalability of on-demand systems
Reduction in time spent managing and maintaining systems

Background

WM-data is a part of LogicaCMG group, a major international force in IT and business services. The group employs around 40,000 people across 41 countries. LogicaCMG’s focus is on enabling its customers to build and maintain leadership positions using LogicaCMG’s deep industry knowledge and its track record for successful delivery. The company provides business consulting, systems integration and IT and business process outsourcing across diverse markets including telecoms and media, financial services, energy and utilities, industry, distribution and transport and the public sector. In the Nordic region the group employs around 9000 people and operates under the trademark “WM-data – a LogicaCMG company”.

Opportunity

WM-data offers its customers a broad variety of server and storage solutions to help them manage their IT systems. Server management is a key IT concern to business, as the entire infrastructure depends on the servers providing the sufficient capacity, performance and availability to support business applications. To simplify server management for its clients, WM-data offers a server outsourcing service called “Capacity on Demand”. The “Capacity on Demand” service helps WM-data’s customers to standardise and consolidate their server environments. By outsourcing their server capacity, customers can benefit from a scalable flexible infrastructure.

A flexible business model, scalability and accessibility were all key concepts in the design of the Server Capacity on Demand service. The Server Capacity on Demand service is adapted to the customer’s need at the time of procurement and can thereafter be continuously adapted to the customer’s ever-changing needs. The initial technical environment is designed wiht minimal standard configurations in order to reduce the complexity and time required for system administration. To ensure flexibility of the customer’s existing IT-infrastructure and to offer a cost-efficient solution the customer may choose to rent srevers and capacity from WM-data in the Capacity on Demand solution or alternatively, host their servers remotely at WM-data. Customers may also choose to outsource their storage needs to WM-data’s storage facilities, encompassing SAN-storage in a variety of different classes and ensuring the same flexible business and technical models for storage, as for servers.

The existing Capacity on Demand solution was designed using proprietary operating systems. WM-data was increasingly receiving demand for a similar solution based on the Linux operating system, from customers who wanted the increased reliability and enhanced security of the Linux platform. To satisfy this demand, WM- data needed to find a commercially viable distribution of Linux that was fully supported. Additionally, they needed guarantees that the distribution would work with the existing hardware and software applications.

Solution

Looking at both customer demand and WM-data’s own criteria for the new Linux-based Capacity on Demand service, it quickly became apparent that Red Hat Enterprise Linux was the clear choice, delivering the required standards of performance and quality with the accompanying hardware and software certification.

Red Hat’s status as leading Linux distributor, with an 80 percent market share of commercial Linux and a customer approval of 97 percent, assured WM-data’s customers of a reliable, quality and cost-efficient solution with high accessibility and flexibility meeting with SLA-demands.

“The increased demand for Linux has created a need for an additional Capacity on Demand service, now on Linux. Even in the early stages of talks with our customers, it was revealed that Red Hat Enterprise Linux was the most sought after Linux distribution for a packaged Capacity on Demand solution”, says J&#246rgen &#197berg, Service Development Manager at WM-data.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled WM-data to build a Capacity on Demand service that guarantees high availability and functionality powered by Red Hat’s industry leading certification programs for software (ISV-partner program) and hardware (Red Hat Enterprise Linux certified hardware). WM-data’s new Server Capacity on Demand Service on RHEL was put together with close cooperation with Red Hat, and was tested thoroughly prior to the official launch. At present, WM-data develops tailor-made and quality ensured Server Capacity on Demand solutions on RHEL for a large number of customers in various industries from finance to the public sector.

Benefits

There have been many advantages to come from the new Capacity on Demand service running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Sine its introduction, the demand for a reliable and quality-ensured Linux platform has continued to increase, and accordingly the growth rate of WM-data’s Capacity on Demand Service has certainly exceeded expectations; the number of servers used for the Server Capacity on Demand service on the Red Hat platform doubled from 2005 to 2006. By standardising the Linux Server Capacity on Demand service on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, WM-data has experienced homogenous benefits in personnel, training and management-systems, which in turn have led to volume-related advantages as increasing numbers of servers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux result in lower costs.

As flexibility and application re-usability become higher priorities for system architects, an increasing number of customers are looking to adopt a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for their IT infrastructure. Virtualization is a key component of any SOA strategy which has become an essential building block on which to design cost and resource efficient IT-systems. To address this growing need, WM-data has outfitted its Server Capacity on Demand Service on Red Hat Enterprise Linux with virtualisation components from VMware.

The virtualisation capability enables WM-data to run several concurrent instances o fRed Hat Enterprise Linux on the same hardware, which has led to savings in hardware, maintenance and operating costs. The open source subscription model means that WM-data can run multiple virtualised versions of Red Hat without the complications of software licensing.

J&#246rgen &#197berg concluded; “With our new Virtual Capacity on Demand Service built on technology from Red Hat and VMware, we position WM-data to address tomorrows IT-needs today.”