Customer

Last week we experienced one of the most significant and exciting launches from Microsoft… the release of Windows 7! As part of the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP), Dell consultants worked with a number of customers during their testing and implementation of both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

At Betfair – home of the world’s biggest betting community – robust IT is crucial. Staff at the firm process six million transactions every day; that’s more than the combined total of the European stock markets. Security and high availability are paramount, as are energy efficiency and ease of maintenance.

When the IT team replicated a standard workflow across various operating systems, they saw a 20 percent performance increase with Windows 7. This improved performance will boost staff productivity, as well as increase the time the IT team has for value-added work. New features of Windows 7, including BitLocker and AppLocker will improve security. With staff queuing for upgrades, the end-user benefits are clear. Eighty percent of Betfair’s staff in Europe will be using Windows 7 within the next month.

Ian Burgess, Head of Microsoft and Datacentre Platforms, Betfair says: “We have a list of tickets in our support system from people requesting Windows 7. It’s faster, easier to use and has lots of features that produce a more polished, seamless user experience.”

Betfair has also significantly reduced energy consumption. For example, Windows Server 2008 R2 takes advantage of the energy saving features of Dell PowerEdge servers and Intel technology. Hyper-V will also help to achieve efficiency and simplify management. Burgess says: “One of our Hyper-V clusters has four nodes with capacity to spare, whereas before there were seven nodes at full capacity. That equates to a massive energy saving across our datacentres. We’ve achieved this through the combined features of the PowerEdge R610 servers, and Windows Server 2008 R2.”

So whether your main motivation is the safety of your mission critical data, energy efficiency or the time your IT team spends managing your client estate, read on for an idea of how Dell can support you. If you're interested in more information your company's migration to the Windows 7 environment, take a look at IT Expert Voice, where best practices and news related to Windows 7 in the enterprise is discussed.

I first met Chander Kant, CEO of open source cloud back provider Zmanda, last year at the MySQL conference.  At that time we did an audio interview.  Just like Jonathan, this time around I caught him on “film.”

This is the fourth out of nine interviews I conducted earlier this month at Cloud World/Open Source World.

Some of the things Chander talks about:

• Thanks to open source and the cloud, Zmanda is able to provide “radically simple to use and cost effective” back-up software.
• Zmanda had its roots in a project out the University of Maryland back in ‘91.
• How Chander got the idea to build a business around this project.
• How the cloud is a good fit for secondary and tertiary storage.
• Cloud storage is often people’s first foray into the cloud.  One reason is the ease of billing.
• Why a publisher moved their storage to the cloud.

But wait there’s more…

Stay tuned for five more interviews from Cloud World/Open Source World coming soon to this URL:

Michael Crandell — CEO of Right Scale

Ken Oestreich — VP of product marketing at Egenera

John Keagy — CEO of GoGrid

James Staten — Analyst covering cloud computing at Forrester

Luke Kanies — Founder of Reductive Labs, maker of Puppet

Pau for now…

I spent a day at this year's Smart Healthcare show in London's Earl's court. I've been going for more years than I can remember - I've spent  almost 15 years in healthcare IT. For me, it's a great opportunity to see the latest products and solutions from hundreds of healthcare ICT suppliers. I'm always looking for ways I can innovate to help NHS Northamptonshire improve the patient care experience - and that includes looking for ways to free up funds to do this. 

Our aim is to be the best Primary Healthcare Trust (PCT) in the East Midlands - so we need to do as much as we can with the funds we have.  Normally at Smart Healthcare I am a bit of a spectator. But this year, I had the opportunity to talk about how we're cutting our energy costs by about 25% each year and reducing carbon footprint by approximately 121 tonnes per year (equivalent to the output of 39 cars) with a customised datacentre solution from Dell and APC.

The impetus to this solution was moving to a new headquarters. We thought: how could we more effectively run our IT systems so we can divert more money towards improving patient care? Our answer: cutting total cost of ownership in the datacentre so the PCT can devote more funds to local services. And by doing this, we also help the trust meet government targets on reducing carbon emissions.

After my presentation, I spoke to a journalist about the new datacentre and he asked me why we needed eight terabytes of storage space. I told him about how the PCT analyses the different healthcare needs of the region- what we term trending. To ensure that we are investing in the right areas of patient care in the right areas of the region, we are reducing investment in areas where there is not such a big need. For example, some towns have a higher proportion of smokers than others, we want to ensure we are focusing most of our anti-smoking programmes there rather than in other parts of the region where there are fewer smokers.

So, the datacentre plays a vital function in helping the PCT achieve its goal to provide the best possible healthcare services for nearly 700,000 people living in the East Midlands.

One of the customers that participated in yesterdays' press briefing with Dell and VMware was Frederick Memorial Healthcare (FMH), which began providing health services to Maryland residents over 100 years ago.

As the hospital is entering its second century in an expanded facility, Roy Turner, FMH's server systems engineer, explains how the healthcare provider's use of technology is key to delivering top-quality care to its patients. For example, FMH is one of the few hospitals in its area with a wireless infrastructure throughout the facility to make information and communication instantly available to care providers.

Dell has helped FMH with IT projects in the past, and the customer trusted the Dell's advice when we recommended VMware as the leading virtualization technology.

Dell ProConsult Services performed the hospital’s initial data center virtualization implementation using VMware ESX 3.5 and VMware Virtual Center 2.5. Dell helped the IT team deploy 106 virtual servers on six new Dell PowerEdge R900 servers.

FMH asked Dell to help it upgrade to VMware vSphere 4 and the VMware vCenter Server. The Dell Services team worked hard to ensure FMH’s VMware vSphere 4 project was a success, and helped set up an initial environment and test the upgrade path FMH would use for its production environment. Roy and the server engineering team have virtualized over 100 servers, with 75 being converted from physical to virtual, reducing power consumption and cooling in the data center.

Roy spent a little bit of time with us explaining their challenges and how they worked with Dell and VMware.

Dell and VMware this week briefed reporters on our respective company's virtualization strategies and some of the trends that customers are facing. Media coverage of the event is already appearing, including this piece from Jean Baptiste Su on his TechPulse 360 blog. 

Joining Dell's Paul Prince, Chief Technology Officer for Dell's large enterprise business, and Steve Herrod, VMware's CTO and senior vice president of the company's research and development, were a number of customers that are actively using virtualization technologies in their infrastructures. Dell/VMware customers Cadence, Northwest National Gas, Trilliant and Frederick Memorial Healthcare have all implemented virtualization and are seeing the benefits. We have interviews with several of those customers that we plan to bring to you soon.

Following yesterday's press briefing, we sat down with Paul and Steve after the event to get their thoughts on the interaction and what was discussed. Many of you may have followed us as we live-tweeted the event. If not, check out @bruceericatdell, @mattmcginnis, @dellservergeek, @kongy_dell for those tweets from yesterday afternoon.

Dell has a long history with VMware. In fact, our virtualization strategy is based on this long history – we’ve been a top partner and reseller for more than seven years. We’ve worked closely together to develop platforms that are built for virtualization and optimized for cloud computing applications. For instance, we were involved in the development of the vStorage API from the beginning; it’s a part of our shared vision. Last Spring, we unveiled vStorage-ready Dell EqualLogic virtualized SANs, meaning that we’ve enabled VMware virtual machines to take full advantage of the advanced intelligence of our storage arrays. 

Take a look.