"We were looking to bring together five local systems into one environment. We were drawn to the cost and operational benefits virtualisation offered the business compared to our existing IT infrastructure."
Johanna de Roder, Information Systems Manager
The Challenge
Koppers Australia needed a reliable hardware platform for its new ERP system, which would enable the company to centralise its Asia-Pacific operations and report to its United States parent company.
It also wanted to lower its operational and IT management overheads and minimise downtime.
"We were already looking at refreshing our existing IT infrastructure, due to growing issues with capacity and performance," says Johanna de Roder, Information Systems Manager, Koppers Australia. "However, the IT upgrade became essential with our planned move from a Unix-based ERP system to a Microsoft Window-based one.
"It was clear we needed hardware that could support the expansion of our business systems and centralisation of our regional operations, and could ensure we had appropriate resources available to handle greater quantities of business data."
How We Helped
In consultation with Harbour IT, Koppers Australia chose IBM virtual servers and storage to replace its existing hardware.
The company used five IBM System x3550 and three System x3650 servers with VMware virtualisation software and an IBM System Storage N3300 storage area network to run its new enterprise application.
"We've reduced our prime power use by 43 percent," says de Roder. "But we were able to save far more by installing the virtualised infrastructure in a new data centre. It not only occupies half the real estate as before, but we're paying A$795 a month for power compared to A$5,850 if we had stayed in our existing data centre."
About Koppers
The Koppers Australia group is a fully owned subsidiary of Koppers Inc. USA and operates throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The company is a leading persified manufacturer serving the region?s industry with coal tar and carbon-based products, carbon black, preservative-treated wood products and services.
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