Energy & Utilities

Founded in 1949, Regionalgas Euskirchen GmbH & Co. KG supplies water and energy to around 60,000 private households, companies and public organizations based in the vicinity of Euskirchen, Germany.

Over the past few years, the German energy market has been liberalized, sparking intense competition among approximately 700 energy providers. Having lost its monopoly on the local energy market, Regionalgas Euskirchen found that its profit margins were being squeezed as competitors tried to undercut its prices. It began looking for ways to cut operational costs to help it offer even better prices to customers and beat competitors to new business.

At the same time, the company realized that it needed to find a more powerful IT platform to support future growth. Regionalgas Euskirchen had plans to acquire water and electricity utilities; this expansion would boost staffing levels by around 33 percent and increase demands on the company’s IT systems.

Unfortunately, the utility’s existing IT environment was unable to provide the performance and scalability required to support the demands of the growing business. Regionalgas Euskirchen engaged stepIT.net, an IBM Business Partner specializing in consultancy and managed services, to help it find a more scalable, cost-efficient platform for its business applications.

Benefits of virtualizationThe company decided to consolidate its six racks, each containing six HP servers, onto just two IBM Flex System chassis, each one located in a separate data center to reduce the risk of an outage in the event of a disaster. The Flex System chassis are connected to IBM System x® 3650 M4 class servers, and IBM System Storage® TS3100 tape libraries in the company’s backup environment. Each IBM Flex System chassis contains six fully virtualized IBM FlexSystem x240 compute nodes, running a total of 110 VMware virtual servers.

Regionalgas Euskirchen beats competitors to new businessCutting IT operational costs by migrating to the IBM Flex System offering

OverviewThe needAs intense competition drives prices down, utilities provider Regionalgas Euskirchen must reduce operational costs and offer even better value in order to retain existing customers and win new ones.

The solutionThe company decided to consolidate its HP servers onto the highly scalable IBM® Flex System™ platform, and upgrade its network capabilities with high-performance IBM technology.

The benefitCuts server footprint by 66 percent, energy costs by 20 percent and avoiding USD 45,000 cost of air conditioning spend, helping the company offer great value to customers and stay ahead of competitors.

Energy & Utilities

Thorsten Bollig, Head of IT Infrastructure at Regionalgas Euskirchen, remarks, “By consolidating six full HP racks onto just two IBM Flex System machines, we reduced our server footprint by 66 percent and cut energy costs by 20 percent. Physical servers generate a lot of heat, and we realized that expanding our existing server infrastructure would have required an upgrade of the air conditioning system in our data centers. By choosing a highly virtualized solution based on IBM Flex System servers, we were able to avoid replacing the air conditioning, which saved around EUR35,000 [USD45,000].”

stepIT.net implemented the IBM solution and provided expert advice and support throughout the project, helping Regionalgas Euskirchen complete the project on time and on budget.

Powerful network infrastructureRegionalgas Euskirchen also upgraded its data center network infrastructures by replacing HP switches with IBM Flex System Fabric EN4093 10Gb and FC5022 16Gb Scalable Switch solutions. Providing outstanding scalability, the switches enable the company to activate additional ports quickly and easily as demands on the network increase.

The company also renewed the network infrastructure that links its two data centers, replacing its existing HP switches with IBM System Networking RackSwitch™ G8124 switches, which provide 24 10Gb Ethernet ports for high performance.

Oliver Moritz, Head of IT at Regionalgas Euskirchen, comments, “By replacing our HP switches with more advanced IBM technology, we have been able to reduce the total number of switches by approximately 80 percent, making our networking infrastructure much easier to manage.”

Making better business decisionsThe IBM solution provides excellent performance for Regionalgas Euskirchen’s business-critical applications, including its IBM Notes® and Domino® collaboration solutions. The company uses IBM Notes and Domino applications to manage every stage of its core business processes: collecting contact details when potential customers make inquiries, connecting the customer site to the company network, managing the delivery of energy, and processing payments.

Solution componentsHardware• IBM® Flex System™• IBM Flex System Fabric EN4093 10Gb

Scalable Switches• IBM Flex System Fabric FC5022 16Gb

Scalable Switches• IBM Flex System x240• IBM System Networking RackSwitch™

G8124 switches• IBM System Storage® TS3100 tape

libraries• IBM System x® 3650 M4

Software• IBM Notes®• IBM Domino®

IBM Business Partner• stepIT.net

Maximizing efficiency

“By consolidating six full HP racks onto just two IBM Flex System machines, we reduced our server footprint by 66 percent and cut energy costs by 20 percent. By choosing a highly virtualized solution based on IBM Flex System servers, we were able to avoid replacing the air conditioning, which saved around EUR35,000 [USD45,000],” says Thorsten Bollig, Head of IT Infrastructure at Regionalgas Euskirchen.

Energy & Utilities

Regionalgas Euskirchen also uses the IBM Notes and Domino solution to generate executive reports, equipping decision-makers with the information they need.

Oliver Moritz remarks, “We have dramatically cut response times for our core business applications. For example, it used to take 15 minutes to generate one particular report. With IBM Flex System, we can generate the same report in just a third of the time! Accelerating reporting processes makes staff more likely to conduct thorough analyses, and base their business decisions on accurate, up-to-the-minute data.”

Supporting the growing businessBy selecting IBM Flex System solutions, Regionalgas Euskirchen can deploy further compute nodes or activate additional resources on the switches as demands on the systems increase.

Thorsten Bollig comments, “The IBM Flex System solution scales up to the meet the future demands of our business, and will be particularly important when we integrate the water utility into our operations.”

Future-proof investmentRegionalgas Euskirchen estimates that the cost of deploying the Flex System solution was around 10 percent lower than the main competing solution. In the long term, the company expects the virtualized solution to cut energy costs by 20 percent, reduce maintenance costs, and help postpone costly investments in new hardware. Cutting operational costs helps Regionalgas Euskirchen provide better value energy to its customers, and beat competitors to new business.

Oliver Moritz concludes, “We are very impressed by the scalability and reliability of the IBM offering. We are confident that the IBM solution will support the current and future demands of our business, and save us money at the same time!”

For more informationTo learn more about IBM solutions, contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit us at ibm.com/systems/flex

To learn more about products, services and solutions from stepIT.net, please visit www.stepit.net

To learn more about Regionalgas Euskirchen, please visit www.regionalgas.de

“We have dramatically cut response times for our core business applications. For example, it used to take 15 minutes to generate one particular report. With IBM Flex System, we can generate the same report in just a third of the time!”

—Oliver Moritz, Head of IT, Regionalgas Euskirchen

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Produced in Germany September 2013

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