Virtualization.com

Interesting case-study from BT, delivered by Stefan Overtveldt, BT Global Services Vice President and Head of IT Transformation Practice at VMworld Europe (check our video coverage) today: they’re using virtualization technologies to run its network of data centres around the globe more effectively, improve service customer service delivery and save no less than 50 % on its overall running costs.

Having already deployed its virtual data centre (VDC) concept to 11 of its 58 data centres around the world, Stefan Overtveldt said the ongoing work and savings would also ultimately help it serve its business customers better. He said VDC first became attractive when BT began to run out of data centre space at the same time as the management of its 3,500 internal and 1,400 customer platforms – made up of applications, operating systems and an average of 10 servers each – became increasingly complex.

BT developed a classic server consolidation strategy in response, which relied on deploying VMware’s virtualization technologies and its competitors in the data centres to reduce its reliance on multiple physical servers. In doing so, it was able to take advantage of the dynamic provisioning capabilities running a virtual infrastructure within a standardized, distributed environment can offer at the same time.

Overtveldt concluded:

“We managed to reduce our overall costs by 50 % and the time it takes to provision new server, storage and network capacity down to hours from days. And our model of extreme standardization means any new internal application requirements outside of the virtual data centres have to have a strong business case first.”

[Source: ITPro]