Virtualization

I used to have a Kyocera phone. I liked it well enough, but since my account is with Verizon and they don’t carry that brand anymore, I have since migrated to a LG’s enV(2). But when I had the chance to check out what Kyocera is doing in their IT department, it got me thinking about my old phone again, and wondering if I should try to get a new one. The business decisions Kyocera are making seem to be pretty smart, so I’m betting their phones are too.

Recently, they were investigating new ways to meet customer demand for their communications services, and they turned to Dell to help them design a solution. They came up with a virtualized infrastructure using VMware and PowerEdge R805 servers. And for storage, they chose Dell EqualLogic PS5000 Series SAN arrays.

By now you’re thinking, so what? Unless you get really geeked out about technical stuff, you probably don’t really care much what’s behind the IT curtain, right? Well hang with me a minute longer because it’s about to get interesting.

See, I think that companies who are figuring out new ways to save money, be more streamlined and more standardized are the kinds of companies I want to buy from - and buy stock from. The old school companies who are all about doing things they way they always did are the ones who are going to tank. Kyocera revised it’s IT, turned a high opex department into a low opex department, and saved the company a ton of money annually.

I think that rocks and I think other companies should be doing the same. Don’t you?

I won't cover it all here but be sure to click over to our blogging mothership, Direct2Dell, to read about Dell's Fast Track to Efficiency, the theme for Dell's announcement of a slew of new servers, a cool new EqualLogic array for small business and remote offices, and quite a few different services.

We'll also be hosting a webcast today with a number of Dell executives outlining the importance of these announcements and the impact to our customers. Following that webcast, my colleagues at Dell TechCenter will be hosting a live technical chat.

Take a look.

World Environment Day was June 5 and I thought it was only fitting that we highlight a customer who is committed to keeping their company green and providing technology to help their customers save energy as well. Atlanta-based Southern Company is the premier energy provider of the Southeast, serving over 4.4 million customers. While the company is committed to be green, they were seeing their kilowatt hour consumption grow by as much as 15 percent and producing more of the corresponding CO2 emissions every year because their own data center.

By instituting a green data center program, the IT team at Southern realized they needed to do something to stop the server sprawl and energy consumption. By virtualizing and consolidating its data center servers using VMware ESX technology on PowerEdge R900 servers, Southern has eliminated over 1,340 tons of CO2 emissions.

“As a result of the virtualization, we avoided more than two million kilowatt hours worth approximately $200,000 over a period of a year and a half,” says Dan Traynor, IT infrastructure director, Southern Company. In the process, they were also able to put a little money back in their pockets to the tune of $1.3 million by not having to add new equipment in their datacenter. That was a huge savings, especially with many organizations trying to extend the life of their equipment.

Read more on Southern Company and how they leveraged technology to be greener. To learn more about Dell and their commitment to the environment, go to Dell Earth.

What “cool” things is your organization doing to be green in the data center? I’d love to hear your stories!

AMD is introducing its Six-Core AMD Opteron processors (code named Istanbul) ahead of schedule and Dell is pleased to offer it in our portfolio including the Dell PowerEdge 2970, R805 and R905 rack servers and the PowerEdge M605, M805, M905 blade servers. We are committed to bringing efficiency to enterprise computing by simplifying technology and lowering the cost of managing IT environments, and the AMD Istanbul processors in our servers help us do just that.

Armando Acosta also wrote about this on the AMD@Work blog.

I recently had an opportunity to catch up with Sally Stevens, vice president, Platform Marketing, Dell and Margaret Lewis, director, Server Product Marketing, AMD, about our collaboration and shared commitment to helping our customers do more with less.

Here is what Margaret Lewis told me about AMD’s collaboration with Dell: “Dell and AMD work together to develop innovative server technologies that can effectively handle today’s most demanding workloads like virtualization, database, and cloud computing. Our approach is to provide a power efficient architecture that balances CPU, memory and I/O for a platform that can easily scale to handle heavy use.

“The six-core AMD Opteron processor provides more compute capabilities with the addition of two more cores per processor, along with increased throughput with innovations like HT Assist. It also includes AMD-V, virtualization technology, and AMD-P, power management capabilities. Dell will be offering Six-Core AMD Opteron processors in 2P and 4P rack and blade servers.”

Incorporating the new six-core AMD Opteron processors in PowerEdge servers packs a lot of compute performance in same footprint as previous generations with:

• Raw Performance – adding two more cores gives this processor a lot more juice and we are seeing huge increases on SPECint benchmarks in our initial tests;
• Energy Efficiency – Istanbul operates at the same power draw as Shanghai, so that added performance means you get better performance/watt;
• Virtualization – with AMD-V technology coupled with our server design with massive memory capacity and I/O scalability, we are seeing whopping improvements in virtualization performance our initial benchmarks. We expect to continue to have industry-leading benchmarks for four-socket servers with Istanbul in the PowerEdge R905.

We are pleased to offer our customers this powerful new AMD technology. Congratulations AMD on the successful, and early, launch of the six-core AMD Opteron processors.

Here is a little more from my conversation with Sally and Margaret.

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a round table discussion about simplifying IT and the benefits it can bring to organisations worldwide. Together with members of the specialised press and Nicolas Laarman, vice president of Atari’s worldwide management information systems, we exchanged views on the current expectations of CIOs, concentrating on how IT is no longer just a cost centre, but a key business enabler, creating strategic advantages for each organisation -- especially critical in the current economic environment. CIOs and IT managers must move with the times and help their clients through the changes to come.

Our discussion made it clear that today CIOs are expected to do more with less. They must create faster, more-efficient IT environments with fewer financial resources. Research shows that many organisations spend 70 percent of their IT budget on maintenance alone, with only 30 percent left for innovation on new projects. CIOs are forced to find new, economical solutions to maintain systems, allowing them to redistribute the remaining finances on other projects. According to Christian Lakomski, director of IT simplification for Dell France, Dell’s objective is to help CIOs eliminate all preventable complexity linked to operations and maintenance.

Dell helps organisations identify their strong and weak points and works with them to establish improved solutions that can be used over the long term. Despite recent IDC figures stating a five percent  decrease in server sales in 2009, we believe that technologies such as virtualisation are a real groundswell opportunity that is only just starting to prove its strengths. 

It was inspiring to hear Nicolas Laarman describe how Atari was able to streamline their operations through virtualisation.

According to Nicolas, Atari chose to work with Dell for five reasons:

1. The extensive availability of a team of experts;
2. A tailor-made project plan;
3. The step-by-step follow through of the project;
4. Dell’s strong quality to price ratio and, finally;
5. The integrated training of in-house teams regarding project up-keep and maintenance.

Atari was both appreciative of Dell’s effectiveness and the large network of strong partner relationships, which enabled Atari to profit from the new measures of cost control. Atari’s case is a perfect example of a company that took advantage of Dell’s commitment to helping organisations simplify and save by removing excess cost and complexity in order to continue innovating within the IT industry.

For another example of successful simplification and saving in IT, you can read MedNetwoRx’s customer perspective here.