CLIENTMajor Pharmaceutical and

healthcare company

CHALLENGESupport rapid business

growth without constantly

increasing data center and

infrastructure expenses

SOLUTIONVblock Systems for agile,

efficient, and cost-effective

growth, as well as high

performance and reliability

RESULTSRunning a 75% larger

IT environment with no

increase in operational staff,

while quickly responding to

new business opportunities

PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

www.vce.com

MAJOR PHARMACEUTICAL FIRM RELIES

ON VBLOCK—A PRESCRIPTION FOR

MANAGING BUSINESS AND IT GROWTH

VIRTUALIZATION PROVIDES 400% COST SAVINGS OVER PHYSICAL SERVERS

Pharmaceutical firms and others in the healthcare industry have become

ever more dependent upon IT. Technology is critical in supporting growth by

helping firms more precisely target research and development and streamline

the manufacturing, production, and distribution of products and solutions.

The constant need for new applications has placed increasing burdens on

IT organizations to manage sprawl and avoid overstepping physical and

organizational limitations.

To standardize on an agile, efficient platform for virtualization and make the

most of its IT resources, one company turned to VCE’s Vblock™ Systems. The

unique converged infrastructure facilitates rapid growth and provides a high-

performance, highly reliable environment for business-critical applications—

without requiring additional data center space or operations staff.

Copyright © 2012 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. Vblock and the VCE logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of VCE Company, LLC. and/or its

affiliates in the United States or other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

“We have received a

400% savings on our IT

infrastructure. With virtual

servers, our IT infrastructure

expenses are only about a

quarter of what we were

paying for outsourced

physical servers. That will

continue to decline as we

improve our automation.”

— Senior IT Specialist

Division of Leading

Healthcare Solutions

Company

The Challenge The company had nearly outgrown

its data center. Operations and

support costs were soaring as the

IT infrastructure grew in size and

complexity. The firm needed a way to

better manage its costs and continue

its extraordinary growth without

adding more physical servers or

building a new data center.

The SolutionThe answer was broad-based

virtualization to modernize and

consolidate the firm’s IT infrastructure.

After a thorough review, the firm

chose Vblock systems to build a

versatile, high-performance, cost-

effective global IT platform.

Two Vblock Series 700 and two

Vblock Series 300 systems were

installed in the company’s U.S. data

centers, while its European operations

are running on two Vblock Series

700 systems and a Vblock Series

300 system in data centers located

in Europe. Vblock systems serve as

a virtualization standard across the

firm’s data centers and make it easy

and efficient to manage multiple

workloads—including a crucial

manufacturing automation database

and a long list of business solutions.

The ResultsBy establishing Vblock systems as

a nearly ubiquitous platform for

virtualization, the company has

received numerous benefits:

• Grew its IT environment by 75%—from

1,500 virtual and 500 physical servers

to 3,500 virtual servers, representing

nearly 90% of its total infrastructure,

without the 50% increase in staff

expenses to be expected under the

company’s previous model

• Avoided the expense of building a new

data center and decreased data center

utilization from nearly 100% to 50%

of capacity

• Streamlined the provisioning of virtual

servers—typically requiring 30 minutes

each compared with up to four hours

for physical servers—to help capitalize

on fleeting business opportunities and

gain a competitive advantage

• Significantly improved its IT reliability

and dependability

In early 2011, The company was

acquired by a larger pharmaceutical

and healthcare company, who had

recently chosen to bring its IT services

back in-house from a global services

provider. With its newly acquired

division experiencing so much success

with Vblock systems, the parent

company installed two Vblock Series

700 systems to virtualize its global

operations centers. Vblock systems

will also be rolled out to 30 to 35

manufacturing sites and regional sales

and marketing offices worldwide.

The Pharmaceutical company is

already enjoying substantial returns:

• 400% cost savings—with its virtualized

servers costing about one-quarter of the

expense for outsourced, physical servers

• More effectively meeting its service-level

agreement (SLAs) and managing the

cost of hardware and software upgrades

• Significant savings on deployment

and implementation of the virtualized

infrastructure thanks to VCE pre-

engineering, pre-assembly, testing,

and validation

• Further simplification of network and

data center operations with Vblock

systems as the corporate standard

Plans are to continue to rely on Vblock

systems in offices, manufacturing, and

research and development facilities

worldwide to cost-effectively support

growth and take full advantage of

future business opportunities.

www.vce.com THE WORLD’S MOST ADVANCED CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE