Consolidation is the name-of-the-game in an economy fueled by
M&As — companies today are relying on inorganic growth to
gain the edge over their competition. As organizations are now
spread across the globe, this command and conquer strategy leaves
their CIOs scurrying to consolidate IT in the wake of a business
merger. The case was no different with Essel Propack Ltd (EPL)
— one of the global leaders in the packaging and laminated
tubes segment — which operates out of 21 locations spread
across 13 countries. Having grown by leaps and bounds primarily
through the inorganic route, it faced a major challenge in terms of
consolidation of its IT infrastructure.
Each organization that was acquired possessed its own IT
infrastructure consisting of multiple servers and varied
architecture with some geographies hosting more than one data
center. The two challenges that this dispersed infrastructure posed
was standardization of IT delivery and the high cost associated
with maintenance of individual infrastructure at each location.
The consolidation process
The first step taken to resolve this issue was consolidation of
various data centers. We consolidated various ERP and mail servers
into one centralized server farm, which was hosted by an Indian
ISP. We also virtualized servers and storage to reduce the number
of physical servers and storage boxes. For active directory and
e-mail services, Essel Propack deployed blade servers with
virtualization technology running on Windows 2008 Enterprise Server
and hosted servers with an ISP. The rack space savings that
accompany the deployment of blade servers have resulted in a
considerable reduction of costs. Secondly, the management of blade
servers is easier in comparison to traditional server.
The process of consolidation was started by monitoring the
existing IT usage in each country. This information was utilized to
design a centralized data center, followed by server and storage
visualization. Next, a robust WAN design using MPLS was implemented
to ensure reliable and secure connectivity to the central data
center from all 21 locations.
Once the design was finalized, the company created a centralized
Active Directory structure and added locations in a phased manner
to the central AD forest. The next step was to consolidate all
e-mail users to the centralized MS Exchange solution and move to
SAP as the common ERP platform.
These technologies helped us reduce costs on hardware and
software licenses, reduce maintenance costs at every location and
helped us leverage the cost advantage of hosting the data center in
a low-cost country like India. In addition, the ancillary benefits
of this exercise include standardization of IT practices across all
the operating locations worldwide and ease of management of this
global infrastructure.
5 pitfalls to address
- Complex configurations of data, applications, and servers can
be confusing for the average user to contend with
- Advanced skills are required to manage virtual
servers
- Since creating VMs is easy, there is always a possibility of
server sprawls i.e. large number of unnecessary servers. Thus,
there is a need to have strict control on server creation
- Debugging issues is also complex and you will need
different skill sets to look into each specialized area e.g.
virtualization software, operating system, network or storage
boxes
- Security is still an issue in virtual world — any server
if compromised can result in other servers getting affected