The University of Magdeburg reduced operating costs 30-40% with HP-UX 11i on Integrity servers running HP Virtualized Infrastructure Solutions for mySAP&8482; Business Suite, lowering TCO.

Increased agility, reduced costs with HP virtualization for SAP

"With the HP Virtualized Infrastructure Solutions
for mySAP&8482; Business Suite we have achieved flexibility in our IT load handling and business agility. It has also cut Total Cost of Ownership: Infrastructure and marginal costs have gone down, which will result in savings of 30 to 40 percent of operating costs."

-- Prof. Claus Rautenstrauch, Faculty for Informatics, Director of the Magdeburg HCC


Supporting over 100 universities, institutes of technology, academies and schools, the University of Magdeburg's SAP Hochschul-Competence-Center (HCC) is one of the largest university data centers in Germany &8211; with extreme load fluctuations and peaks to match. In order to efficiently handle demand while minimizing infrastructure costs, the HCC completed a project to virtualize its entire SAP environment.

Industry and academia now demand that graduates demonstrate extensive practical skills in addition to theoretical knowledge. Given the wide distribution of SAP within industry, it makes sense then to train students in this leading software. To assist, SAP has provided free software to German universities and colleges through the HCC at the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg since 2000.

The HCC infrastructure is based on HP servers running HP-UX Operating System and HP StorageWorks. Access is made via the Internet. This is cost-effective for customers as they are already interconnected via the German Research Network. The HCC is linked to the Network by fiber-optic, while internally the servers are connected by HP ProCurve switches &8211; which makes access to SAP via the Internet simple and cost effective.

Challenges

The University of Magdeburg operates an SAP University
Competence Center (HCC) based on the Application Service Provider model.
Large number of users &8211; some 40,000 students &8211; results in a high IT load.
Fluctuations in demand result in huge peak loads for the IT infrastructure.
Effective peak load management by distributing SAP applications to various servers.

Solution

HP Virtualized Infrastructure Solutions for mySAP&8482; Business Suite
Virtualization and consolidation of HP and SAP system landscape.
Control of load distribution for SAP applications by SAP Adaptive Computing Controller integrated into HP solution.

Results

Effective peak load management by distributing SAP applications to various servers. Virtualization ensures optimal usage of hardware, which enables consolidation of existing hardware. Consolidations helps reduce IT operating costs by some 30 to 40 percent. The HCC can continue to provide a professional, educational service at a more cost effective price and with greater agility to meet future demand.

Source : HP