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2 #226173 ©2010 IDC

S I T U A T I O N O V E R V I E W

The economic downturn has greatly influenced how IT organizations and senior

business managers view IT spend. The business value of that IT spend must be

demonstrated in order to be justified and paid for. And yet, if current infrastructure is

not evaluated and vetted for operational costs, maintenance of the status quo in the

datacenter can also prove to be costly — even if no new systems are added.

That is why 2009 began an intense period of study and evaluation in which IT

managers looked at servers, storage, software, and services with an eye to keeping

overall capex costs in check while driving operational costs down. In many cases,

new IT purchases were kept to a minimum, while the study of what was already

in-house continued. Some of the results of this "inventory" process were surprising

with regard to the rapid growth of small servers, which individually kept server

purchases under the capex limits set by policy but collectively were causing

operational costs to rise, especially with respect to maintenance, IT staff costs, and

energy costs related to power and cooling.

This year, many organizations cautiously reentered the IT purchasing phase but didso only if the avoidance of future hardware costs could be forecast and if existing

workloads could be consolidated into fewer server "footprints" in the datacenter. This

applied across the board — affecting all types of servers running all types of

operating systems.

D e p l o y i n g E n t e r p r i s e A p p l i c a t i o n s i n t h e

D a t a c e n t e r

Many IT organizations have deployed enterprise applications across multiple "tiers" of

computing over time. This means that some are end-to-end applications — tapping

the Web-serving, application-serving, and database-serving "tiers" of the datacenter.

In other cases, specific enterprise application modules are deployed within a business

unit, such as those that support business unit analysis or accounts receivable.

The major enterprise applications, including those of SAP, are able to run on many

types of servers, hosted by many types of operating systems and processor

architectures. However, earlier trends toward highly distributed computing led to the

use of many dedicated servers, which ran just one application module, or the use of

multiple servers running the same application, for purposes of redundancy and

availability.

In many cases, this approach kept applications close to the end user, but it did not

take advantage of improvements in high-speed networking and the ability to

consolidate workloads onto more scalable servers for more efficient operation. Today,

customers have a wide range of deployment choices, and some have decided to

consolidate some — but not all — of these enterprise applications onto scalable

servers for central site management and to reduce ongoing operational costs

associated with maintenance, repeated software upgrades and security patches, and

the need to maintain large numbers of small servers, many of them distributed over

multiple sites.



©2010 IDC #226173 3

R e d u c i n g O p e r a t i o n a l C o s t s o f E n t e r p r i s e

A p p l i c a t i o n s i n t h e D a t a c e n t e r

In recent years, IT organizations have developed a sharp focus on reducing

operational costs — including IT staff costs, management and maintenance costs,

and the costs of unplanned downtime, which can take important systems offline for minutes, or hours, rendering those applications inaccessible for end users and end

customers within the supply chain. Energy costs associated with power and cooling,

which coincidentally increased during the recent economic downturn, are another

category of operational cost that has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years

given cost constraints across the business and limits on IT budgets.

IDC research has shown that rapidly increasing power and cooling and maintenance

costs have been top of mind for IT managers and datacenter managers — prompting

a cycle of evaluating current IT infrastructure to improve overall efficiencies, including

the use of datacenter floor space and energy efficiency. The adoption of virtualization

has helped in this regard, with many IT organizations leveraging virtualization to be

able to consolidate workloads onto fewer server footprints. But server design has alsochanged, with multicore, multiprocessor systems playing an important role in

supporting workload consolidation and improved operational efficiency. Importantly,

the ability to manage the physical servers — and the virtual servers that are hosted

by them — has proven to be a key component of improving operational efficiency.

C o n s o l i d a t i n g W o r k l o a d s o n S c a l a b l e S e r v e r s

i n t h e N e x t - G e n e r a t i o n D a t a c e n t e r

IDC's most recent annual Server Workloads and Server Virtualization studies have

produced demand-side, customer-based data that clearly demonstrates the steady

march toward improved efficiency in the datacenter. In fact, IDC research shows that

2010 was the "crossover" year in which the number of virtual servers exceeded thenumber of physical servers shipped (see Figure 1), demonstrating the business value

of virtualization and consolidation of workloads.



4 #226173 ©2010 IDC

F I G U R E 1

S e r v e r V i r t u a l i z a t i o n C r o s s o v e r i n 2 0 1 0

Source: IDC, 2010

What's driving this consolidation is economics; hardware investments can be more

highly utilized than before, and the workloads can still be isolated from each other to

prevent unplanned downtime or contention for resources (processors, memory, I/O).

Consolidation and virtualization are increasingly combined, across the board, whether

on x86 servers, RISC servers, or mainframes. At the same time, virtualization

management, often involving automation, has become essential for keeping

operational costs low.

It may be surprising to many to discover that a large percentage of all business-

critical and mission-critical applications and databases are running on scalable

servers. These larger servers offer in-the-box capacity on demand, advanced

virtualization, and highly granular control of all resources under management.

As defined by IDC, business processing workloads running on servers today include

online transaction processing (OLTP), ERP, and CRM. These are mission-critical

workloads, which are highly demanding of computing resources. As seen in Figure 2,

a large portion of business processing workloads today (34%) run on RISC server

platforms — a type of server architecture on which the IBM Power Systems servers

are built. Figure 2 also shows the other major types of platform architectures: EPIC,

x86, and CISC (which is the basis for scalable host servers such as mainframes).

Business processing is one of seven major workloads types studied by IDC on an

annual basis, based on surveys of more than 1,000 customer sites. The other major

workload types are decision support (analysis of data), collaborative (email and

groupware), application development, IT infrastructure (e.g., support of networking

protocols and file/print), Web infrastructure (e.g., Web serving, proxy, and caching),

and industrial R&D (e.g., technical computing and high-performance computing).

0

2,000,000

4,000,000

6,000,000

8,000,000

10,000,000

12,000,000

14,000,000

16,000,000

18,000,000

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Physical servers Virtual machines



©2010 IDC #226173 5

F I G U R E 2

I D C ' s S e r v e r W o r k l o a d s R e v e n u e s b y C P U T y p e , 2 0 0 9

Source: IDC's Server Workloads Multiclient Study, 2010

By consolidating workloads onto scalable servers, customers gain the advantages of

more computing resources, more capacity, improved management of workloads, and

more efficient use of real estate space and power than would be the case with larger

numbers of smaller servers distributed across the datacenter or multiple sites.

Although it cannot be suggested that all workloads could, or would, be fit onto just a

few scalable servers, it is possible to identify mission-critical applications that would

benefit from running on a scalable, highly available server platform.

I B M ' S P O W E R S Y S T E M S S O L U T I O N S

The next-generation datacenter is all about capability — capability to scale up,

capability to be energy-efficient, and capability to host important workloads with high

reliability and availability. Due to the operational characteristics of IBM Power

Systems, some customers have studied ways to consolidate workloads onto more

scalable servers — even if they are accessed from multiple remote sites.

The business benefits can be impressive, with some aspects of operational costs

bring dropped dramatically compared with earlier scale-out deployments.

0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000

Other

Industrial R&D

Web infrastructure

IT infrastructure

Collaborative

Application development

Decision support

Business processing

($M)

x86 EPIC RISC CISC



6 #226173 ©2010 IDC

IBM is now shipping Power Systems based on POWER7 processors, refreshingits entire line of Power Systems servers in calendar year 2010. These servers

range from small entry servers in the Power Systems Express series to midrangeand high-end servers that offer scalability and advanced virtualization,

partitioning, and management capabilities.

POWER7 processors bring faster performance, dramatically improvedperformance/watt energy efficiency, and up to eight cores per POWER7 multicore

processor. POWER7 supports more scalable, highly virtualized systems, withgranularity of as little as 1/10 of one processor devoted to a single workload.

Virtualization Enables Consolidation

IBM Power Systems servers have built-in virtualization capabilities through IBM

PowerVM hypervisor technology. They can be highly virtualized, with up to 10

micropartitions per POWER processor. Within the partitions, customers have theoption to run one of three operating systems: IBM AIX Unix, Linux (Red Hat

Enterprise Linux or Novell SUSE Linux), and IBM "i" (the follow-on product to i/OS

or AS/400 for IBM System i servers). By isolating these workloads within partitions,PowerVM supports workload consolidation on a Power Systems server.

Consolidation of workloads leverages these virtualization capabilities, allowingworkloads to reside side by side within the same processor or partition — or

within different partitions within a Power Systems server. Finally, advanced on-board system management software directs the workload to available hardware

resources, dynamically reallocating workloads as processing requirements

change and as business needs change over time.

Deployment Scenarios for SAP with Linux on IBM Power Systems

S A P o n L i n u x D e p l o y m e n t s : C o n t r i b u t i n g

F a c t o r s C i t e d b y R e s p o n d e n t s

For the SAP customers in this IDC study, leveraging Linux is an important way to

optimize their application deployment environment, making it easier to work with other

types of open source software for ease of integration. Many of them have had longexperience in working with Linux, whether because of longtime use or availability of

Linux expertise in their geographic market.

Importantly, access to a deep pool of Linux programmers and developers was often

cited by the study's respondents as a driver for choosing a Linux-based platform.

Finding and retaining programmers

with deep Unix skills is often

expensive and difficult, compared

with the broader group of

developers with Linux skills, many

of the respondents said.

In this study, all of the customers

were running SAP on their

enterprise systems. In some

cases, they ran it across multiple,

smaller servers within the business

unit, but in other cases,

consolidated SAP workloads found

their way to the IBM Power

Systems running IBM AIX Unix or,

in this case, Linux.

A key driver for this deploymentdecision, customers explained,

was economy of scale in deploying

SAP on a large machine, where

multiple instances could be

managed more easily. Other

reasons included familiarity with the applications and operating environments and

achievement of high levels of availability by hosting the applications on a high-end

server with little to no unplanned downtime.

The centrality of SAP to many of the IT sites studied by IDC is made clear by this

comment from one customer: "Creation of revenue is not part of the SAP system [we

have implemented], but our entire billing, help desk management, CRM, inventory, allthose areas — the entire shop for us — is on SAP," he said. "It is extremely critical —

90% of our mission-critical operations are run either directly through SAP or association

with SAP."

Skill sets and familiarity with Linux were also factors in the decision to deploy SAP on

Linux for these Power Systems, although these systems support three types of

operating environments: IBM AIX Unix, Linux, and IBM "i," which supports

applications that once ran on IBM AS/400 and IBM System i. For some, Linux has



©2010 IDC #226173 7

already been selected as a cross-platform operating system that spans the

enterprise. "Linux is a strategic server platform [at our company]," said one IT

manager, "because it supports open and vendor-neutral architecture and deploying it

brings cost benefits."

In many cases, the familiarity came with working with Linux on x86 server systems first

— prior to selecting Linux on Power. "We have a technical background and our

colleagues have a

background in Linux running

databases and other

applications," said one IT

manager. For this customer,

three Power Systems

servers are supporting the

Linux workloads that were

running on more than 15

dedicated servers — with

each server devoted to one

SAP application — in the

datacenter.

Consolidation of workloads

brought important savings

by reducing operational

costs, which the tables in

this paper show. These

operational cost reductions,

as well as cost avoidance,

are critical to explaining how

the initial investments were

recouped in just over a half-

year of deployment.

The savings included

notable reductions on

software licensing costs due

to the lower number of

instances of IBM software

products (e.g., Tivoli

management) or third-party

(e.g., Oracle database)

licenses needed to supportthe consolidated SAP

environment on Power

Systems. Some customers

cited this as a major factor in

their decision to consolidate

SAP on Power Systems.

IDC sees ERP customers, amid the backdrop of an economic environment that has

brought extraordinary levels of board-level oversight to IT budgets, continuing to look to

drive costs and risks out of their ERP upgrades. SAP and ERP vendors in kind areresponding by going beyond application delivery to provide even greater value for their

clients in areas such as advisory and transformation services. For advisory services, this

means offering upgrade assessments, business process standardizations, andarchitecture assessments. Transformation services come by way of enterprise application

integration and process modeling, application upgrades, platform migration, or architecture

and infrastructure transformations.

For customers, a key driver for consolidation of multiple ERP instances as part of theupgrade or reimplementation process is the desire to transform to a shared services

platform among business units for back-office functions such as HR, financials, and

procurement, gaining significant TCO reductions in the process. Further efficiencies aregained by reducing the number of ERP suppliers, which will help pare the company's IT

skills requirements and ease integration challenges. Streamlining the ERP datacenter and

supporting infrastructure has similar benefits, not only reducing overhead and loweringTCO but also providing greater flexibility for adjusting to spikes in workload demands.

SAP is a suite of modular applications for the enterprise. Originally developed for use on

the IBM mainframe, SAP was ported to many other operating systems over the years.

Today, it runs on all major computer architectures and all major operating systems,

including Unix, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.

In the enterprise, scalable SAP systems tend to be sized to the number of end users

they support, but the actual deployment is still shaped by customer preferences. So the

choice of platform and operating system ultimately comes down to customer preference,as well as performance.

SAP has run on Linux since the late 1990s, making it a proven, well-described computing

environment. Multiple Linux distributions are supported, but the main ones for Power

Systems are Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise System (SLES) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux(RHEL). Both of these Linux distributions have been designed for use with enterprise

workloads and have built-in support for high availability, security, and demanding

workloads that are accessed by hundreds to thousands of end users.

SAP was originally developed for use on IBM mainframes, but that version (R2) was ported

to Unix systems in the 1990s and later was ported to Linux and Microsoft Windows. Today,customers can run SAP modules across their enterprise computing environment, but the

characteristics of the platforms that run SAP applications may determine the deployment

patterns for specific instances.

In the case of Power Systems, overall system scalability; built-in, advanced virtualization;and the ability to run both the SAP modules and the database that stores the application

data on the same machine are factors that could lead to a decision to consolidate

workloads. Frequently, SAP modules are deployed within business units, often running onWindows or Linux systems, but they may not be colocated at, or even nearby, the central

datacenter site for the company. The IT managers in this study found it advantageous to

colocate multiple SAP applications on fewer "system" footprints, reducing managementcosts, licensing costs, and IT staff costs in many cases.

Implementation Trends of SAP



8 #226173 ©2010 IDC

K E Y F I N D I N G S O F T H E I D C R O I S T U D Y

IDC's business value methodology is based on quantifying the experiences of end-

user organizations and then translating those experiences into a financial analysis

using a standard approach and assumptions as well as commonly accepted financial

metrics and formulas. To make the results relevant to all types of organizations, we

report them in terms of a common denominator — in this case, per 100 users. Thedetails regarding the key findings can be found in the tables that follow.

T h e C u s t o m e r s

IDC studied a group of enterprises that have deployed SAP applications on IBM

Power Systems servers and have been working with those systems for several years.

The study was conducted with the aim of finding out the results of initial investments

in those platforms and how those investments impacted operational costs over time.

Specifically, IDC conducted in-depth interviews of 10 organizations, each of which

deployed SAP applications on IBM Power Systems (using the IBM POWER6

processors) running Linux. These companies ranged in size from 350 to 5,000

employees; they were based in a variety of geographies, including the United States,

Europe, and Asia/Pacific. They represented many vertical industries, including retail,

financial services, manufacturing, and energy. On average, these companies had

1,900 employees, with an IT staff that numbered in the hundreds, and they had 600+

physical servers under management. Most were running multiple SAP modules,

including those for human resources (HR), ERP, and CRM.

The interviews yielded information defining the organizations' up-front investment costs

in the technology, deployment, and ongoing maintenance of the systems. The

interviews elicited the companies' experience with tangible and measurable IT benefits

and end-user business benefits over a three-year period. IDC's Business Value team

combined all of these factors in the synthesis of an overall ROI calculation.

Each site managed a unique inventory and mix of server platforms. Most of these

organizations were large companies in which the server infrastructure supported tens of

thousands of intraenterprise end users — and an even larger number of extraenterprise

users, including end customers, accessing their enterprise systems. Each of these

organizations deployed IBM Power Systems for purposes of workload consolidation onto

fewer server "footprints," and each had used them over a period of three years or more.

T H E B E N E F I T S O F C O N S O L I D A T I O N O FS A P - L I N U X O N P O W E R

IDC's analysis of the interviews revealed that the organizations in the study have

experienced the following benefits:

IT infrastructure cost reduction — reduced capex spending by $11,150 per 100

users annually or more than $1.1 million for a company of 10,000 users



©2010 IDC #226173 9

IT staff productivity increase — reduced the IT staff time spent on manual and

maintenance activities, freeing up resources for more business-related activities

and to expand SAP process automation applications without adding overhead by

$5,840 per 100 users annually or roughly $600,000 for a company of 10,000 users

End-user productivity increase — reduced SAP application downtime by 74%,

increasing overall user productivity by 1% and adding $7,355 per 100 users

annually or roughly $735,000 for a company of 10,000 users

Revenue increase (operational income) — reduced downtime related to

customer-facing SAP operations, increasing operational income by $676 per 100

users annually or roughly $67,000 for a company of 10,000 users

I T S t a f f a n d U s e r P r o d u c t i v i t y

As Figure 3 shows, combined IT staff and user productivity increases accounted for

over half of total annual benefits.

F I G U R E 3

Annua l B ene f i t s pe r 1 00 Use r s

Source: IDC, 2010

This increase in productivity affected IT staff as well as company employees (user

productivity). IDC calculates these forms of productivity separately, but both are the

result of building a more efficient platform for delivering the SAP applications. IT

productivity (see Table 1) comes from time savings as a result of consolidated

operations, higher quality of services, reduced maintenance, and the effects of reduced

downtime (which, in turn, reduces the need for additional IT staff time associated with

bringing the systems back online and repairing whatever damage has occurred).

IT infrastructurecost reduction

($11,150)

IT staff productivity

increase ($5,840)

User productivitysavings ($7,355)

Operational profitincrease ($676)



10 #226173 ©2010 IDC

T A B L E 1

I T S t a f f P r o d u c t i v i t y

IT Staff Productivity % Savings Value per 100 Users ($)

Server installation 93 476

Data backup 57 655

Security (patching) 100 1,071

Help desk 62 1,797

Total IT staff savings 33 5,840

Source: IDC, 2010

User productivity (see Table 2) is associated with improvements in the availability of

the applications and in the ability to work. This effect of business continuity ripples

throughout an organization, allowing end users — and end customers — to access

applications and associated data, often on a 24 x 7 x 365 basis (around the clock).

Today's global business has drastically reduced the "window" for scheduled downtime

because end users and end customers around the world need to access the same

systems. This means that high levels of uptime for applications are essential to high-

performing organizations.

T A B L E 2

U s e r P r o d u c t i v i t y/ S e r v i c e Q u a l i t y

User Productivity/Service Quality Hours per User Value ($)

Downtime hours per year before 4.45 121

Downtime hours per year after 1.14 31

Downtime savings 12.77 hours (74%) 90

Help desk hours per year before 0.37 17

Help desk hours per year after 0.10 4

Help desk savings 1.06 (89%) 12

Overall user productivity increase from faster, more reliable SAP

application operation

1% 614

Total user productivity benefit per user 716

Source: IDC, 2010



©2010 IDC #226173 11

The amount of unplanned downtime experienced by the study sites was one-quarter

the amount they had reported before workload consolidation onto Power Systems.

This avoidance of downtime translates into cost avoidance, improved user

productivity, improved IT productivity, and more revenue to the business through

avoidance of system downtime. In general, IDC finds that the reduction of downtime

affects all aspects of a customer's business because it optimizes business operations

and business results and avoids costs associated with IT staff, such as help desk

activities, and improves user productivity (across the organization).

C r e a t i n g a M o r e E f f i c i e n t P l a t f o r m

As Table 3 shows, the average utilization rate per server rose from 34% to 70%

following consolidation of SAP workloads on Power Systems running Linux. Increased

resource utilization is a consequence of virtualization and consolidation, which result in

having the applications run more efficiently on the consolidated platform and, in the

process, avoiding the hardware costs by deferring the need to have additional capacity.

T A B L E 3

K e y O p e r a t i o n a l I m p r o v e m e n t s

Key Operational Improvements Before After

Utilization rate (%) 34 70

Number of CPUs supporting SAP 24 9

Source: IDC, 2010

In the study group, the number of processors running the SAP workloads was

reduced from 24 to nine, improving the administration and management of the

hardware resources. Because the Power Systems are already virtualized through the

use of the PowerVM hypervisor on Power Systems, these customers have the option

to increase the number of processors, as needed, when new workloads are added to

the system. Further, new workloads that would eventually be added to the machine

could run on IBM AIX or Linux, depending on the nature of the workloads and such

factors as customer preference. This promoted customer choice for deployments.

The consolidated, more efficient platform enabled a reduction in hardware costs of 55%

(see Figure 4). This result reflects not only the immediate benefit of reducing server

hardware today but also the avoidance of future hardware purchases related to theexpansion of the SAP modules to support continued process automation. In most cases,

reductions in the current hardware environment also drove reductions in related IT costs

such as software (18% reduction), datacenter space (5% reduction), networking

infrastructure (4% reduction), and energy for power and cooling (18% reduction).

These cost savings, in combination with the increase in IT staff productivity, enabled

the companies to reduce their costs to deliver SAP business applications by 31%.



12 #226173 ©2010 IDC

F I G U R E 4

I T I n f r a s t r u c t u r e C o s t R e d u c t i o n

Source: IDC, 2010

I n c r e a s e d O p e r a t i o n a l I n c o m e

Based on the respondent data, 40% of the organizations in the study recognized

revenue associated with SAP operations that were interfacing with their end

customers. By reducing application downtime by 52%, thereby improving time to

market and reliability, they were able to increase their top-line revenue by an average

of $1.7 million annually. For the purposes of combining revenue benefits with cost

savings as part of an ROI analysis, IDC converts revenue to operational income. IDC

does this by assuming that every $1.00 of revenue requires $0.90 in costs (10%

operating margin). In this analysis, $1.7 million in revenue translates to approximately

$170,000 in operational income benefit.

R O I A n a l y s i s

IDC's methodology for ROI analysis involves assessing the discounted cash flows

that were generated by the investment over a three-year period. Our standard

discount rate, which typically is the cost of capital invested, is 12%. This is sufficiently

high to cover most organizations' cost of capital, plus any additional risk associated

with higher than average investment or with delayed recognition of benefit. The

investment in consolidating SAP-Linux on Power platforms consists of any initial costs

for hardware and software, installation, consulting services and additional labor

associated with consolidation and migration, up-front training, annual support, and

maintenance. The consolidation process varied significantly because some

companies chose to stagger deployment over time; however, on average, companies

consolidating as one continuous process required 10 months to complete.

0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000

After

Before

($)

IT staff Hardware Software Datacenter



©2010 IDC #226173 13

Over a three-year period, companies saw discounted benefits of $59,967 and an

average investment of $13,625 per 100 users, resulting in an ROI of 340% and a

payback period of 6.7 months (see Table 4).

T A B L E 4

T h r e e - Y e a r R O I A n a l y s i s p e r 1 0 0 U s e r s

Average

Average benefit (discounted) $59,967

Average investment (discounted) $13,625

Net present value $46,342

Discount rate 12%

ROI 340%

Payback period 6.7 months

Source: IDC, 2010

This short payback period may be surprising to some. Although Power Systems are

priced from less than $10,000 to more than $1 million per server, the midrange and

high-end models have generally gained the most attention. But due to highly efficient

virtualization and efficient operations, the Power Systems show attractive operational

costs when used over a three-year period. Given the overall costs examined in this

study and the detailed IDC analysis of actual costs seen by Power Systems sites, it

can be seen that operational costs were greatly reduced through the use of POWER6

based systems, which led to the conclusion that initial costs could be recouped within

a year. IDC notes that the use of POWER7 based systems, which began shipping in

February 2010, would be expected to further reduce operational costs and to improve

the average benefits and the ROI results shown in this study.

C H A L L E N G E S / O P P O R T U N I T I E S

C h a l l e n g e s

While this study has demonstrated that deploying SAP-Linux on Power Systems is

highly efficient, it is not the choice of all Power Systems customers. That is because

multiple deployment decisions can be made, depending on IT experience with the

specific computing environment under discussion (in this case, Linux on Power

Systems) and depending on the familiarity of programmers and system administrators

with that specific environment.



14 #226173 ©2010 IDC

This study found that SAP-Linux deployments on Power Systems brought notable

reductions in operational costs compared with earlier deployments at these customer

sites. However, other decisions could have been made that would also have brought

operational benefits, compared with older systems, such as running the same

applications under IBM AIX Unix, depending on customer preference and skill sets.

Customer preferences for operating environments and for hardware architecture often

are high of the list of selection criteria; therefore, some customers may lean toward

other choices, including deployment of SAP-Linux on x86 servers, especially if their

background has been deeply rooted in the x86 world. However, it is equally clear that

IT sites should fully explore the option of leveraging Power Systems given their

scalability, availability, support for security, and ability to consolidate multiple

workloads that may have been running on x86 servers in the datacenter.

O p p o r t u n i t i e s

The datacenter is being transformed, and many of the traditional deployment patterns

are undergoing change, prompted by economics and by an interest in reducing

operational costs. Because of this, workloads that once ran on many dedicated

servers — servers running only one application — are being consolidated to run on

fewer servers running consolidated workloads, often for the purpose of reducing

energy costs related to power and cooling and IT staff costs.

Taking an inventory of where applications are being run today and an IT "snapshot" of

current deployments could lead to changes in an IT site's future deployment patterns.

As this inventory is under way, factors to consider include the following: energy

efficiency, ease of use, IT staff time, and high availability for the enterprise applications

that run the business.

Customers have an opportunity to change their traditional patterns for deployment within

the datacenter or computer room. They can look at new deployment patterns that could

reduce the use of datacenter floor space as well as reduce energy costs and

maintenance costs. While there are many possibilities in this wave of datacenter

transformation, those themes will be a guide to next steps in building a more efficient

datacenter infrastructure.

C O N C L U S I O N

IDC's study of organizations that had deployed SAP applications on IBM Power

Systems running Linux found that these sites experienced operational cost savings

over a period of three years following initial deployment. These companies, which

ranged in size from 350 to 5,000 employees, were based in a variety of geographies,

including the United States, Europe, and Asia/Pacific.

The study, which was based on in-depth interviews, determined the extent of customer

investments in existing Power Systems technology and the resulting IT and business

benefits associated with those systems. The IBM Power Systems servers studied were

considered to be "critical" to the businesses that deployed them. That means that

downtime would have affected both user productivity and company revenue.



©2010 IDC #226173 15

The systems, which were scalable, supported workload consolidation from larger

numbers of smaller servers.

By leveraging consolidation, and by combining it with virtualization, customers saw

efficiencies associated with hosting the SAP modules on IBM Power Systems.

Overall, the respondents reported that they saw measurable IT and business benefits

from these deployments, amounting to millions of dollars per year in savings for large

enterprises. In addition, they saw ROI payback periods of just over half a year

following initial investment in/acquisition of IBM Power Systems.

C o p y r i g h t N o t i c e

External Publication of IDC Information and Data — Any IDC information that is to be

used in advertising, press releases, or promotional materials requires prior written

approval from the appropriate IDC Vice President or Country Manager. A draft of the

proposed document should accompany any such request. IDC reserves the right to

deny approval of external usage for any reason.

Copyright 2010 IDC. Reproduction without written permission is completely forbidden.

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