Architecture Improvement Case

TTG

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Infrastructure Architecture & Design Improvement: Case Study

Scenario: Our people encountered the need to consolidate a global bank's many data centers across the country to three national data centers. These new national data centers were required to support new and disparate applications, hosted environments, customer contact centers, and numerous development environments. They not only facilitated the consolidation and relocation of processing and support, but also developed and implemented required processes and service level agreements (SLAs) with the various user communities required to ensure successful continuity of operations.

Symptom:  The unit supply cost of electricity from the local power company and fuel for the on-site back-up generators rose 18% in one year; 26% over three with no relief on the horizon.   The companies demand for electricity was growing at a rate of 20% a year and forecasted to increase to over 40% during the next two years.  Additionally, sales growth required the need for the expansion in network and computing resources which key locations could not physically accommodate.

Problem Statement:  Power cost and data center facility planning had never been a core competency of the company and its impact on their balance sheet was not factored into the overall corporate strategy.  Operating primary, secondary and tertiary data centers became a strain on the company’s balance sheet, without either a strategic direction or tactical plan it was clear that due thought and attention was required.

Issue:   Like most companies, this one built its primary data center in the same building as its headquarters and its disaster recovery and tertiary centers in other owned business sites.  Since the other locations were selected for their proximity to clients and not the cost of electricity or fuel the company was vulnerable to energy price risk.

Solution:  Our people focused on four primary design objectives; a commitment to green power consumption that not only reduced energy need/demand but also a lower unit cost.  The placement of company computing assets would be based on principles of resources sharing and finally capacity optimization.  

Outcome:  The Company achieved a 23% reduction in electricity and fuel cost along with a long term contract to offset raises in rate.  Additionally, a 25% reduction in the consumption of power due to planned technology replacement and better deployment configuration.  Finally a 41% reduction in overall computing storage cost due to improved capacity planning and platform consolidation.  The overall initiative required a 12% investment in year one and two while achieving a net 53% total computing cost by year 5.


How TTG Can Help You: The same expertise and thinking that drove those results would be  deployed against your Infrastructure Challenges. We will partner with you to create solutions that meet your needs, and fit your organization’s capabilities to execute.