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Monitor and optimize complex networks
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Automate and orchestrate processes end to end
Manage IT & software assets for better compliance
Automate server provisioning, patching, and compliance
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ValueEdge: Value Stream Management
Align corporate investments with business strategy
Continuous quality from requirements to delivery
Scale enterprise SCCM with security and compliance
Resilient AI-powered functional test automation
Enterprise-level requirements management
Deliver continuous application performance testing
Plan, track, orchestrate, and release applications
Govern quality and implement auditable processes
Automate deployments for continuous delivery
Access all products in application delivery management
Modernize Core Business Systems to Drive Business Transformation
Build business applications using new tools & platforms
The leading solution for COBOL application modernization
Modernize mainframe applications for the Cloud
Modernize host application access
Discover the future of CORBA
Modern mainframe application delivery for IBM Z
Secure, zero-footprint access to host applications
Access host data and automate processes with RPA
Multi-factor Authentication for IBM z/OS endpoints
Access all products in Application Modernization & Connectivity
Security at the core to everything you do; Operations, Applications, Identity and Data
Build secure software fast
Augment human intelligence
Discover, analyze, and protect sensitive data
Drive IT ecosystem with identity-centric expertise
Deliver simplified, secure access to users
Scale to billions of identities with IGA platform
Gain control of privileged user activities
Track changes and activities in managed services
Get fast, accurate detection of threats
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Trusted, proven legal, compliance and privacy solutions
Analytics for text, audio, video, and image data
Reduce risk, cost, and maintenance, and T2M
AI and machine learning for data analysis
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Unified traditional and mobile device management
Meet regulatory & privacy retention requirements
Email, IM, and chat-based collaboration
Mobile workforce communication & collaboration
Secure critical file storage and print services
Access all products in Information Management and Governance
Simplify Your IT Transformation
Manage IT & non-IT services with automation and AI
Discover, monitor, and remediate with AIOps
Monitor and optimize complex networks
Discover, manage, and map configurations & assets
Accelerate provisioning with governance in place
Automate and orchestrate processes end to end
Manage IT & software assets for better compliance
Automate server provisioning, patching, and compliance
Automate screen-based human actions with robots
Access all products in IT Operations Management
Give your team the power to make your business perform to its fullest
Estimated savings
Time to migrate servers with a team of 8 people
The company saw an opportunity to reduce costs by embarking on a major IT consolidation initiative.
Operating in the highly competitive energy market, Essent is constantly seeking to increase operational efficiency and deliver better value to customers and stakeholders. The company saw an opportunity to reduce costs by embarking on a major IT consolidation initiative.
Prior to the project, Essent’s IT infrastructure was distributed between three data centers. The company decided to move to a central data center that would be simpler to manage, maintain, and protect.
The first challenge was timing: Essent needed to move quickly before the lease on one of its existing data centers expired. Second, the servers used by Essent Trading needed to be online at all times, so it was not possible to shut them down and physically ship them from one location to another. Third, with limited space, power, and cooling available at the new site, it was vital to minimize the number of physical servers required and ensure room for future growth.
Essent is a leader in the Dutch energy sector, supplying electricity, gas, heat, and waste management services to private and business customers in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. The company also operates an international energy trading division called Essent Trading. Essent employs 12,000 people and achieved annual revenues of up to €7.4 billion.
Essent identified a number of solutions for simplifying the move from physical servers to virtual hosts (P2V), but the company also needed help with physical-to-physical (P2P) migration. PlateSpin technology was uniquely able to cover both requirements.
“We liked the ability of the solution to provide anywhere-to-anywhere workload migrations – not only physical-to-virtual but also physicalto-physical and virtual-to-physical,” said Marco Spoel, Project Manager of IT Infrastructure at Essent. “By enabling many different workload movement activities, PlateSpin technology supported both our data center consolidation project and our ongoing operational requirements – all within a single software, support, and training investment.”
PQR, a partner specializing in PlateSpin technologies, performed a successful proof of concept, and Essent decided to go ahead with the full implementation.
Essent used PlateSpin Recon to remotely monitor the existing IT infrastructure and perform a full audit of the inventory and utilization of each server. This made it easier to decide which servers were the best candidates for virtualization and which should be moved directly from one physical machine to another.
Using this information, Essent created a detailed migration plan and deployed PlateSpin Migrate to perform the P2P and P2V migrations. Within a month, the company moved 260 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Microsoft Windows Server workloads from heterogeneous HP hardware to standardized IBM System x servers. In addition, Essent migrated 50 physical machines to virtual machines on VMware ESX Server – reducing floor space requirements in the new data center by 8%.
Marco Spoel – PROJECT MANAGER, IT INFRASTRUCTURE
Essent
To further reduce its IT management costs, Essent opted to standardize its Linux environment to a single distribution, selecting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as the most cost-effective option.
By implementing PlateSpin to facilitate a rapid and non-disruptive move to the company’s new central data center, Essent was able to continue its business operations without significant interruption – a crucial advantage, especially for the time-sensitive energy trading division. Moving all the company’s IT infrastructure to a single location will also provide considerable benefits in terms of manageability and security.
“The PlateSpin solution saved Essent about €2 million for the data center consolidation project alone,” said Spoel. “The solution also made it possible to complete our data center consolidation without any costly business disruption and with considerably reduced risk. The value to our organization over time could easily be in the order of hundreds of millions of euros.”
Essent views PlateSpin as a strategic asset that will continue to deliver value in the long term. As the business continues to grow, the IT infrastructure will grow with it, and PlateSpin will help Essent assess how to manage its servers most effectively
“The energy industry in which we operate has a high degree of merger and acquisition activity,” said Spoel. “Essent typically buys smaller energy companies once or twice a year. With PlateSpin workload management solutions, we will be able to complete the IT consolidations associated with M&A activity with relative ease.”