Component white papers

Systalians is the external IT arm of the Reunica group - France's third-largest personal pensions group - and acts as its partner, service provider, expert, and host for computing resources. A leader in adopting new technology, Systalians refreshes Reunica's IT infrastructure every three years. Over the years, this aggressive approach, based on Intel architecture, has enabled Systalians to maintain performance levels and improve system reliability while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). As part of its latest server refresh, Systalians combined its move to the latest Intel technology with a step-by-step migration to a virtualised infrastructure.

The Schwan Food Company uses Intel processor-based servers to extend virtualisation to new applications, cut power consumption by 13%, and reduce the hardware footprint by 30%. The ice cream home-delivery service wanted to create a virtualised infrastructure running Intel Xeon processor 5500 and 7400 series to help it roll out new applications and improve the IT group's response to business requests.

IT services provider Atos Origin is constantly striving to deliver the most compelling services to its clients. Through ongoing interaction with its customer base, the company identified a growing requirement for SAP landscapes in the mid-market. With extensive experience in delivering SAP solutions to large enterprises, Atos Origin had the expertise necessary to develop a Service offering enterprise class performance. It now needed the platform to enable it to do this with mid-market price and flexibility.

R Systems provides government agencies, academic researchers, and commercial enterprises fast access to high performance computing (HPC) resources. To accommodate two client requests in a short time frame, R Systems worked with Intel and Dell to upgrade a 288-node HPC cluster by deploying new customised servers equipped with the Xeon processor 5500 series. The upgraded cluster helped a customer increase aggregate application performance by 200 percent while providing the density and energy efficiency to enable R Systems to further expand HPC resources.

Türkiye Finans Katýlým Bank is one of the largest participation banks in Turkey. It serves over one million customers through more than 200 branches with over 3,200 employees, and offers a range of online banking services. Its challenges included improving the responsiveness of existing services and develop new ones to enhance the bank's customer offering, and to increase capacity and manageability of resources by replacing its large and ageing server fleet

Gas Natural is a multinational energy company in Europe, the main global operator of LNG (liquid natural gas) in the Atlantic, and one of the principal operators of combined cycles generating plants in the world. In order to maintain its leading position it recognised the necessity of adapting its IT environment. Gas Natural wanted to enhance the service delivery to its distributed workforce, by ensuring optimal system operating time in desktop PC environments and enhanced service continuity to different departments.

The University of Zürich is Switzerland's largest, with a 24,000-strong student body and 1,900 graduates every year. Its list of alumni includes 23 Nobel Prize winners, among them Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger (one of the founders of quantum mechanics), and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (the first person to win the Nobel Prize in physics). In keeping with this record of achievement, the University is committed to making use of new technologies to continue driving innovation and discovery across scientific fields ranging from nanotechnology, over life sciences, to cosmology.

The Centre for Earth Observation (ESRIN), part of the European Space Agency, has a team of more than 600 scientists responsible for processing data from satellites. The information gathered is essential for understanding the environment and one primary importance is in preparing for and reacting to natural disasters. In order to do this it needs a powerful, reliable computing platform.

Western Digital (WD) achieved what Minh Vu, director of data systems and operations, calls "massive ROI" when it started consolidating and virtualising its dual-core Intel Xeon processor-based servers onto new servers powered by the Intel Xeon processor 5400 series. But Western's performance demands keep rising. With the economy pushing IT to cut costs, Vu says his IT shop has found a way to meet those demands and deliver even greater ROI: continue its server refresh on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series. The economics of the new processor are so compelling, Vu says, "Even in hard times, we don't have to hold off on server replacement. With every new server I buy, we come out ahead."

Siemens IT Solutions and Services is in the midst of a two-year shared services initiative that's using new approaches - and Intel's latest innovations in server processors - to transform the company's service delivery architecture and provide a highly virtualised, agile, and cost-efficient IT environment.

To succeed in the competitive marketplace for managed IT services, DataPipe must deliver outstanding processing performance for its clients while controlling the costs of running its data centres. When the company's IT group designed a new data centre, it standardised on the low-voltage Intel Xeon processor 5400 series to deliver the processing power that clients demand while supporting the density, scalability, and energy efficiency needed to contain costs and support continued customer growth.

Erie Insurance is a multiline insurance company offering home, auto, commercial and life policies. It has 22 branch offices in 11 US states, so managing the desktop environment is a challenge. A top priority for the IT team is avoiding user downtime that could interrupt workflow or the real-time support the company provides to its branches.

Tube Lines has a 30-year Public Private Partnership (PPP) contract with London Underground. It is responsible for the maintenance and upgrade of the infrastructure on the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, including all tracks, signalling, stations, bridges, embankments, trains and tunnels. A massive investment programme involving new trains and refurbished stations is currently underway. Behind the scenes there is an equally vital transformation in IT support.

Polycom helps keep its worldwide operations secure by refreshing its laptop fleet with Intel vPro technology and Intel Anti-Theft Technology Polycom has achieved success as the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice communication. With more than 75% of the Polycom workforce either remote or mobile, the IT team looked for ways to boost the security of the company's worldwide fleet of over 2,000 laptop computers.

Semiconductor manufacturer Powerchip Semiconductor (PSC) specialises dynamic RAM (DRAM) technology. Increasing business demands and growing security concerns allowed it to take advantage of its Predictive Enterprise strategy, upgrading its computer systems to suit a rapidly evolving business environment.