Microsoft Virtualization: Data Center to DesktopCustomer Solution Case Study

Global Fashion Retailer Saves Around £80,000 a Year with Data-Centre Technology

OverviewCountry or Region: United KingdomIndustry: Retail and distribution—Apparel retailing

Customer ProfileWith a retail presence in 35 countries, Paul Smith produces high-end lines of clothing, fashion accessories, and household goods.

Business SituationWhen Paul Smith built a new head office, it needed to deploy a data-centre capability that was resilient enough to run 24 hours a day to support its worldwide business operations.

SolutionThe IT team and the company’s technology provider Risual built two parallel data centres using virtual server technology Hyper-V, to provide more services requiring fewer resources.

Benefits Server costs cut by £50,000 Deployment and maintenance

streamlined Uptime increased to 99.9 per cent Carbon footprint reduced

“By moving to [an environment] monitored by Systems Center Operations Manager, we can catch server failures before they happen [and] have increased the availability of applications threefold, to 99.9 per cent.”

Lee Bingham, Head of IT, Paul Smith

Fashion designer Paul Smith opened his first shop in 1970 in the United Kingdom. Now, the company is a global brand with a retail presence in 35 countries, providing high-end clothing for men and women, plus accessories and household goods. When it built a new warehouse facility, it took the opportunity to redesign its server estate to better support the business worldwide. Using the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system with Hyper-V technology, the IT team worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Risual to create two new data centres. With virtualised servers and the Microsoft System Center family of IT management solutions, Paul Smith is cutting hardware and maintenance costs by around £80,000 a year, and carbon emissions by 30 per cent. The company now has a reliable, highly available IT infrastructure that helps its global retail operation remain competitive.

SituationBy creating classic designs in surprising fabrics, Paul Smith has built a clothing brand that is known for its quirky individualism and considered quintessentially British by the rest of the world. The company has grown from a small shop in Nottingham in the United Kingdom (U.K.), into a luxury brand coveted worldwide. The company still runs this international business from its head office in Nottingham.

Despite the global economic downturn over the past few years, Paul Smith has continued to prosper, in part because of its ability to find innovative solutions to business needs. In 2008, the company purchased a large site in Nottingham to build a new head office, data centre and global distribution warehouse. Its long-standing strategic IT services provider Risual—a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with a detailed knowledge of the businesses requirements—worked with the in-house team to design the new data centres and improve functionality.

The firm’s retail outlets rely on its head office to provide core services to more than 1,200 employees. As a global retailer working in multiple time zones, Paul Smith needs its data centres to be highly stable and available 24 hours a day. Disaster recovery was a critical factor, with the company needing a faster recovery time than the 24 hours it currently experienced.

Fashion retail is a dynamic business, and retailers need to respond quickly to seasonal changes, providing the high-quality goods that customers demand. Time to market is critical, as is brand

protection. To remain competitive in a highly volatile market, Paul Smith needs to manage costs carefully while maintaining its image as a fashion-focused customer-friendly organisation. Its infrastructure needed to be cost effective both in the short and medium terms.

The company wanted to centralise management, while delivering new functionality to key staff with up-to-date data management software. As a customer-oriented business, it was also important for Paul Smith to reduce the environmental impact of IT, while focusing on cost containment and effective data management.

SolutionRisual recommended virtualisation to create a resilient data-centre design that would reduce operating costs, deliver highly available services and ensure adequate disaster recovery. Lee Bingham, Head of IT at Paul Smith, says: “It was perfect timing. With our new warehouse, we had the opportunity to redesign our IT infrastructure. We looked at the business requirements for the next five years and evaluated the technology available. Reducing the footprint of the data centre—from physical housing to power consumption—was important. Virtualisation fitted perfectly into that requirement.”

Risual was the primary IT provider for Paul Smith, based on its dedicated focus on Microsoft technology and ability to maximise existing investment by integrating with the tools already in use. After consulting with Bingham, Risual nominated the company for the Windows

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"Reducing the footprint of the data centre—from physical housing to power consumption—was important. Virtualisation fitted perfectly into that requirement."

Lee Bingham, Head of IT at Paul Smith

Server 2008 Early Adopter Programme. As an early adopter, it received a dual data-centre architecture based on the Windows Server 2008 operating system with Hyper-V virtualisation software. When Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter became available, Bingham and his team immediately upgraded. The initial architecture consisted of a number of Hyper-V hosts clustered across the two data-centre sites. All new machines added to the data centres were virtualised, and, as existing servers were moved over, they were virtualised and consolidated wherever possible. The resulting infrastructure used 50 per cent less hardware, while delivering more services, such as file and directory services and other business services such as Microsoft Lync Server 2010 technology, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 data management software.

To complement the data-centre innovations, Risual recommended the Microsoft System Center suite of IT management solutions. It played a key role in the implementation and performed a number of roles—from provisioning desktops from a central system, to helping reduce the company’s carbon footprint. Paul Smith used the complete suite, including Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3, and System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.

Richard Proud, Director at Risual, says: “The System Center management suite is now better integrated than previous versions. This means that while the tools can be used individually, the best management solution

is to use them all together.” At Paul Smith, System Center Virtual Machine Manager provisions new servers, while System Center Configuration Manager deploys and updates servers. In addition, System Center Operations Manager monitors the operational health and capacity management of the servers.

Risual also deployed storage area network (SAN) technology, allowing replication of data between the two new data centres, and improving the resilience and disaster recovery capability. Proud says: “Disaster recovery is an important part of the solution that is supporting the global Paul Smith business. Every evening, data is automatically backed up, and throughout the day, data is synchronously replicated using Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010. From a disaster recovery perspective, workloads can be transferred from one data centre to the next within a minute, which provides us with peace of mind.”

BenefitsBy deploying Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and the Microsoft System Center suite, Paul Smith has improved the company’s IT infrastructure with a reliable and resilient service management toolset. The system is highly scalable and leaves room for growth. Management solutions within the system work together as part of a flexible solution that can be scaled up or down as needed. Reducing energy used to power and cool the system cuts running costs—saving the company around £80,000 a year. It also helps keep its carbon footprint low.

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“The System Center management suite is now better integrated than previous versions. This means that while the tools can be used individually, the best management solution is to use them all together.”

Richard Proud, Director at Risual

Cost of Deploying and Maintaining Servers Reduced by £50,000 a YearPhysical servers cost approximately £4,000 to £5,000 to purchase and provision, while virtual servers can be deployed for less than £1,000. In addition to purchasing hardware and maintaining servers, the cost of running the system has also been cut.

”Through virtualization, we can reduce the number of physical server and our support and maintenance contract,” says Bingham. The IT team can now provide more services without hiring extra staff, one of the largest costs of doing business. System Center Operations Manager monitors the server estate across the countries where Paul Smith operates and provides a traffic-light view of the system’s health, showing red, yellow, or green alerts. “This makes it easy to fix things before they cause a service outage. Uptime and service level management have improved,” says Proud.

Ease of Configuration and Deployment Cut Costs by £20,000 a YearThe small IT team has benefitted significantly from ease of integration. System Center Virtual Machine Manager can provision a new server in one hour rather than the two days it took to deploy a physical server. “With Windows Server 2008 R2, we can support a lean and agile IT team,” says Bingham. “This shows the business that we can maintain a strong strategic ability with only a few people.”

With System Center Configuration Manager, Paul Smith can deploy new software from its head office to desktops at its locations worldwide. “Remote

deployment such as this represents huge savings in time and effort,” says Proud. “It is anticipated that Paul Smith could recoup up to £20,000.”

Uptime Increased to 99.9 Per Cent with Disaster Recovery in Just One Minute“Any downtime costs money, so we can’t afford for our system to fail,” says Bingham. This is a challenge for all businesses, but it is especially important to a global retail organisation such as Paul Smith, with long operating hours. “By moving from a non-monitored environment to one monitored by System Center Operations Manager, we can catch server failures before they happen,” says Bingham. “We have increased the availability of applications threefold, to 99.9 per cent.” Disaster recovery time is reduced from 24 hours to one minute. If a virtual server fails, the applications on it roll over onto another piece of hardware, so the actual recovery is almost instant. “The stability of the servers is good, but if one fails, Microsoft management tools make it easier for us to get it up and running,” says Bingham. “Not only does it give me peace of mind, but the transition from one server to the next is so smooth that end users don’t even notice if a server fails.”

Green Solution Cuts Carbon FootprintPaul Smith is committed to reducing the impact its operations have on the environment. To help fulfil this goal, it employs a team, which applies the company’s green agenda across the business. Although IT wasn’t initially on the green team’s radar, it soon became apparent that the data-centre deployment was the biggest environmental sustainability project delivered in 2010.

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“Transitioning from physical to virtual servers cut our carbon emissions by 30 per cent, so we directly contribute to the company’s agenda for green strategies.”

Lee Bingham, Head of IT, Paul Smith

“Transitioning from physical to virtual servers cut our carbon emissions by 30 per cent, so we directly contribute to the company’s agenda for green strategies,” says Bingham.

System Center Configuration Manager works with the rest of the suite to support the company’s environmental sustainability agenda with features such as remote shutdown of machines. With 600 machines across the organisation, the potential for savings is tremendous. “Paul Smith now has time-zone linked power-saving features, which allow the machines to go into power-save mode during non-working hours. This could cut energy consumption in half,” says Proud.

Microsoft VirtualizationMicrosoft virtualization is an end-to-end strategy that can profoundly affect nearly every aspect of the IT infrastructure management lifecycle. It can drive greater efficiencies, flexibility, and cost effectiveness throughout your organization. From accelerating application deployments; to ensuring systems, applications, and data are always available; to taking the hassle out of rebuilding and shutting down servers and desktops for testing and development; to reducing risk, slashing costs, and improving the agility of your

entire environment—virtualization has the power to transform your infrastructure, from the data center to the desktop.

For more information about Microsoft virtualization solutions, go to: www.microsoft.com/virtualization

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Risual products and services, call or visit the website at:www.risual.com

For more information about Paul Smith products and services, call or visit the website at:www.paulsmith.co.uk

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published May 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft System Center

Configuration Manager 2007 R3− Microsoft System Center Data

Protection Manager 2010− Microsoft System Center Operations

Manager 2007 R2− Microsoft System Center Virtual

Machine Manager 2008 R2

− Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter− Microsoft Lync Server 2010− Microsoft Exchange Server 2010− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Technologies− Hyper-V