Greentech Lead Europe: IBM has enabled Suffolk Life, a
provider and administrator of specialist pensions, to reduce energy consumption
while meeting increased customer demand.
The U.K.-based Suffolk Life adopted IBM’s Smarter
Computing approach to IT several months ago.
In the four weeks following completion of the project in
April, overall power consumption at Suffolk Life had reduced by 37 percent,
delivering projected savings of approximately 30k pounds Sterling per
year.
Suffolk Life administers more than 16,000 self-invested
plans with gross assets in excess of 4.5 billion pounds.
IBM’s Smarter Computing approach to IT is designed to
provide customers greater system efficiencies and performance, while lowering
costs, through the use of optimized systems. Suffolk Life has increased
infrastructure based on consumer and business demand while lowering energy
consumption.
IBM upgraded and consolidated the Suffolk Life IT server
and storage infrastructure to deliver increased flexibility in handling and
accessing pension data across the business while significantly decreasing their
carbon footprint and energy costs. The improvements also allow for easy
expansion as their customer database grows.
“We are continually looking to find new ways of
improving our business processes and infrastructure in order to deliver top
class propositions and services for our customers. This project has been a
resounding success for Suffolk Life. IBM delivered an updated infrastructure
ahead of schedule that enabled us to significantly reduce our power consumption
and associated running costs,” said Ian Long, head of Information
Technology for Suffolk Life.
IBM migrated 84 percent of the existing physical
environment to a new virtualized server and storage environment, switching from
HP servers to energy efficient IBM System x3650 M3 servers. As a result,
Suffolk Life has consolidated the physical servers from 66 boxes to only six
across two sites, plus the additional nine IBM hosts providing the new virtual
environment. As well as providing a new server and storage infrastructure, the
project included the migration of 60 business applications to the new
environment.
“IBM has been able to apply our services expertise
to provide Suffolk Life the IT flexibility needed to keep up with increased
customer demand and provide the foundation of flexibility, efficiency and
capacity to significantly grow the business into the future,” said Andrew
Brierley, vice president of Integrated Technology Services, IBM U.K. &
Ireland.
As a result of the project, data indicates that overall
power consumption at Suffolk Life has reduced by approximately 37 percent since
the implementation of the new infrastructure with a potential cost saving per
year of up to 30k pounds Sterling. The power reduction seen during the first 4
weeks of running the new environment equates to almost 13 tons of C02
(12,888kg).