Multi-billion Dollar Corporation Engages MSI to Simplify Global IT Environment: Plan Slashes Operating Costs to Handle Anticipated Doubling of Revenue

Imagine the challenge. You're the CIO responsible for managing the IT operations of 50 separate manufacturing, distribution, licensing and export centers, and some 21,000 employees in nearly 170 countries-a $4.2 billion global enterprise. Tough enough. But what if the growth rate of this enterprise is projected to nearly double this number in just two more years? Your IT operations are not currently centralized. Operating costs are mounting, and pulling off support for all of the pieces has become something of a tightrope act. Yet somehow, you are expected to come up with extra capital to invest in technology that will handle the workload of new business acquisitions and sales channels. What do you do?

For this customer, that's the budget decision point executives landed on this year when they decided to team with MSI Systems Integrators in a global IT centralization initiative. They share a nice piece of the pie in its industry as a developer and marketer of premium cleaning, sanitizing, pest elimination, maintenance and repair products and services for the world's hospitality, institutional and industrial markets.

"Our new cost-efficient IT environment is freeing up the substantial capital needed to make investments in more productive and proactive functions." - Information Technology Director

The Challenge

If the company were to meet its sales, growth and market share goals, it would need to become a centralized, cost-effective, truly on demand global IT operation. MSI helped them envision an IT enterprise to stamp out the operational inefficiencies and unnecessary costs currently hindering investments in the company's continued success. They would then recycle these savings toward technologies that support new business units in Asia, Latin America, North America and Europe, as well as technology that extends services to the end-user level.

Their first move was to purchase a new Data Center Operations tool from Cray Research and engage MSI to lend a critical eye to its enterprise operations. MSI took a detailed inventory of the company's inefficiencies by conducting a unique Information Technology Infrastructure Library study. Next, MSI hosted multiple customer visits to its Technology Enablement Center (TEC) for education, demonstrations and whiteboard solutions to more effectively architect the proper roadmap.

The MSI Solution

MSI proposed a multiphase approach that combined:

• Architectural design,
• Enterprise server consolidation,
• Storage architecture redesign, and
• Management of the storage environment, disaster recovery and enterprise management

Phase One condensed the worldwide accumulation of cross-platform servers to just nine IBM eServer® BladeCenter® Chassis, fully populated with 1-way, 2-way and 4-way blades. MSI recommended running VMware® on more than half of these processors to address Intel® server consolidation. In addition the solution utilized:

• An IBM eServer® pSeries® 570 with multiple LPARs to address UNIX® consolidation and centralization
• An IBM eServer® iSeries™ 550 with multiple LPARs to address midrange consolidation and centralization
• A tiered storage environment combining a McDATA® SAN Fabric, IBM TotalStorage® FAStT, and IBM "Shark" Enterprise Storage Server® 800 incorporating IBM FlashCopy®, PAV (Parallel Access Volumes) support, and TSM (Tivoli® Storage Manager) software
• MSI services to design the data center migration plan, implement the entire solution, and provide knowledge transfer for successful ongoing support

So instead of trying to control operations at nine separate business units stretching across the Atlantic, MSI's plan pared everything down to nine LPARs managed by a single server-located and centrally managed at the Global IT Data Center.

Phase Two focused on revamping and streamlining their open systems backup processes. MSI's to-do list included:

• Upgrading the IBM zSeries® environment,
• Adding storage management functionality,
• Architecting and implementing a disaster recovery solution, and
• Designing and implementing an enterprise management solution

MSI proposed a blend of SVC (TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller), MDM (TotalStorage Multiple Device Manager), SRM (Storage Resource Management), iTera and enterprise management products from BMC Software® to complete the transformation. Finally, MSI prescribed a virtualization of the storage environment and the inclusion of IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center, an open storage infrastructure management solution, to monitor and manage IT requirements on a global scale.

The Benefits

Considering their field of work, it is quite fitting that this powerhouse tackles the road ahead with a much cleaner, more unified IT environment:

• Simplified storage:
  Costly StorageTek silos have been removed, enabling a 100-1 reduction in the amount of tape needed to store critical data.
• Lower overall management " maintenance costs:
  They can now monitor and manage IT requirements on a global scale, from one central location, so inefficiencies and unnecessary operational costs no longer devour IT budgets.
• Easier data center migration:
  A consolidated mainframe tape environment provides more effective means of data storage during data center migrations, demonstrated in a planned data center move early 2005.
• Reduction in the number of storage vendors:
  By completing this transformation the company is successfully reducing the number of vendors within its storage environment from 10 to two.

As MSI and the customer complete the final stages of global centralization, they are well armed to take on its 2007 growth target. The new cost-efficient IT environment is freeing up substantial capital to make strategic investments in productive and proactive IT functions pushing forward as a global leader.

For additional information on how MSI Systems Integrators can help your organization, contact us at 800.640.4674 or visit our Web site at www.msiinet.com.