MSI Solution Saves Materials Manufacturer $2.3 Million by Replacing Outdated Storage Solution

A recent assessment of a regional materials manufacturer's storage environment revealed the company was spending an unnecessary $250,000 per year to support its tape-driven systems. This mounted to $2.3 million over the life of the contract. Executives knew it was time for an overhaul, but had no idea just how much the HP® environment was robbing them in terms of inefficient processes and costly outsourcing services.

Based in Missouri, the manufacturing corporation is a $1.6 billion manufacturer of basic materials with approximately 5,700 employees in the U.S. Its expansive product lines include (1) Brass/Copper Alloys used in the automotive, building and coinage industries; (2) Ammunition for recreational and military use; and (3) Chlor-Alkali products such as chlorine and caustic soda used in water purification, cleaning chemicals, textiles, pulp and paper.

"MSI did an excellent job configuring and managing the acquisition of this powerful new system." - Director of Computer Operations

The Challenges

The SAP production and test environment consisted of a DLT IV manual tape powered by HP/UX servers running 27 multiple LPARs. The servers had reached a point where they were about three generations behind current technology and were becoming more difficult to support and maintain. Backups took far longer than necessary. Database refresh times for SAP and PeopleSoft® applications were taking hours instead of minutes. Floor space was dwindling. Manual tape handling, multiple points of failure, higher failure rates and increased maintenance requirements were inflating outsourcing costs. Concerns increased regarding the vulnerability of relying on tape alone.

Something had to be done. And it required quite a bit of imagination to come up with a solution that not only improved performance and capacity, but also justified a substantial return on investment.

The customer's IT team met with MSI Systems Integrators to identify savings opportunities and then devise a plan to capture those savings by migrating to a total IBM storage solution-one that enabled Them users to store, access and retrieve important data faster and more securely than ever before.

The MSI Solution

Once MSI and IGS pinpointed and put a dollar figure on gratuitous expenses directly related to the limitations of the old system, the plan made perfect sense. MSI's strategy would offset support costs by using virtualization to consolidate their processing requirements on fewer servers. Plus with new IBM software and a lower-rate services contract, the solution put them on track to achieve the financial and performance balance it needed to justify the move.

The approach called for replacing the entire array of stand-alone HP servers with five IBM eServer® pSeries® 650s. This created an environment where applications are more responsive and less susceptible to processing failures and downtime. In addition, more resources are now available for handling workloads faster, thus beefing up overall productivity. Elimination of the 12 stand-alone systems also significantly freed up floor space and simplified maintenance requirements.

Additionally MSI's plan expanded existing IBM storage hardware with an IBM "Shark" Enterprise Storage Server® (ESS) SAN solution, along with improved IBM switching equipment. IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager® (TSM) was also added to create a more flexible and responsive storage environment. Tivoli storage virtualization capabilities enabled storage resources to manage and retrieve information faster and more efficiently.

A significant portion of the upgrade costs were offset by savings that would accrue from lower support services costs. IGS hosts, manages and maintains their system's hardware and software at its facility in Lexington, KY and has done so for many years. So as a trade-off for The's new system being much more of a workhorse and much less of a floor hog, IGS renegotiated the existing services contract, essentially creating a new five-year support contract at a reduced rate. This positioned them to get ahead of the technology curve and do it at a surprisingly economical overall cost.

The Director of Computer Operations was impressed by MSI's imaginative approach to the financial challenges and believes MSI fared well in its execution: "MSI did an excellent job configuring and managing the acquisition of this powerful new system," he said. "MSI ordered and configured the equipment, assuring that it arrived on site at the appropriate time, and handled all of the software licensing issues related to the project."

The Benefits

The manufacturing corporation's new setup offers improved capacity, performance and plenty of headroom-all at a very attractive return on investment. In fact, they expect to completely recapture its capital investment in only 30 months. MSI estimates an additional $377,702 in savings beyond the payback period.

These savings are a direct result of numerous key business benefits They have Corp. has already put to work for its bottom line:

• Easier and cheaper to support and maintain
• More responsive and reliable SAP applications; users can store, access and retrieve data faster and more securely
• Improved overall productivity
• Substantial cuts in service-related outsourcing costs
• Justifiable ROI in just 30 months
• Significantly less floor space to manage
• Greater visibility with customers
• Sufficient headroom to easily accommodate even the most optimistic growth projections for the coming years

How did the success of this project measure up to the customers' expectations?

"We are delighted with the results. We have has a powerful new storage infrastructure for mission-critical applications, which is being partially paid for by previously committed funds, recouped through savings in IBM Global Services support fees," the director of computer operations said.

Although HP tried its best to offer a competitive alternative, the combination of benefits and cost savings made the IBM/MSI solution the obvious choice. The company was able to acquire the new technology it needed to become a truly on demand storage environment while achieving a highly justifiable ROI in a very short period of time. Some may call this a rarity in today's IT world. In this case, it's simply smart business.