09 Nov 2006
Construction company Taylor Woodrow has improved productivity by 90 per cent after implementing a new data centre server infrastructure.
The firm, which designs and constructs homes and commercial buildings, has also adopted server virtualisation technology and reduced its core back-end servers from 25 to just two.
The infrastructure runs core business systems that provide data to Taylor Woodrow construction sites across the UK.
The renewal is the most complex IT project undertaken by the company, says head of IT infrastructure Andrew Hyett.
‘Our systems were ageing and it was becoming more difficult to recover information,’ he said. ‘Our goal was to improve recovery of core information from our enterprise resource planning systems.’
IBM and Computacenter reduced the number of core back-end servers that operate on AIX, to increase system reliability and improve staff productivity.
This server virtualisation is allowing Taylor Woodrow to run more applications on fewer servers, reducing backup time.
‘The average server might use 10 to 30 per cent of capacity, so we put applications on top to maximise capacity,’ said Hyett. ‘We then migrated key applications to the new data centre, such as financial and product information unique to the building industry.’
Information from construction sites is backed up each evening, and the time it takes has been cut from three-and-a-half hours to 23 minutes, a reduction of 89 per cent.
Hyett says the new infrastructure is scalable to ensure it can meet the firm’s future needs.
Forrester analyst Frank Gillett says server virtualisation can lower operating costs and improve the speed of data recovery.
‘Moving to the latest server technology increases reliability and flexibility as Taylor Woodrow can shift the workload between servers as it needs more processing power,’ he said.
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