New Virtualization Platform Provides Superior Performance and Value for ENSULMECI

The goals set for this project were defined on three main premises: reduction of exploration costs, simplification of the infrastructure management, and availability maximization and solution scalability. The dynamic nature of the implemented virtualization scenario fully meets the goals allowing the perspective of providing additional services over the same infrastructure. Ana Castanho, Director of Information Systems/CIO, ENSULMECI

The Situation

ENSULMECI, an international engineering, procurement, and construction company, had a decision to make about its IT assets. Its infrastructure servers were reaching the end of their lifespan. The Portuguese firm conducted a business case for two scenarios: either maintain its existing physical equipment and replace obsolete components; or adopt new virtual infrastructure. As a result of the evaluation to measure its hardware utilization levels, the company decided to implement a virtualization platform. The choice was taken to improve management control, service quality and availability, and financial benefits. However, ENSULMECI lacked virtual technology expertise, and selected Capgemini to find and implement a new solution.

The Solution

The solution advocated by Capgemini consisted of a platform implementation for datacenter virtualization, consolidating all of ENSULMECI’s servers, and allowing different levels of response for each specific type of service offered. Now the company gives higher priority to production environments, and lower priority to others such as development, quality, and testing. The platform was built of virtualization architecture made up of four high-performance servers, and equipment to support all virtual servers and keep systems running in case of hardware failure. Platform management is performed on a centralized management console, which reduces management and operation work for technical staff. Capgemini provided expertise and experience in a number of technologies – VMware, HP, Cisco and Checkpoint – all of which were vital to deliver the solution.

The Result

The virtual platform not only improved the quality and availability of all services for the end-users, but it also reduced the workload for skilled IT professionals. Less equipment was also needed with Capgemini’s solution: hardware and hardware resources were reduced by 80% and 60% respectively, while the same performance levels were maintained and service availability was increased. The company also needed 83% less rack space, and saved 64% of exploration costs.