Published on 30-Sep-2010
Validated on 02 Apr 2012
"The combined effect of IBM’s hardware and software solutions means we’re more prepared for the future than ever before." - Stewart Enterprises, Inc.
Customer:
Stewart Enterprises, Inc.
Industry:
Professional Services
Deployment country:
United States
Solution:
Business Resiliency, Server Consolidation, Virtualization, Virtualization - Server
IBM Business Partner:
CMA Technology Solutions
Overview
Stewart Enterprises, Inc., owns and operates funeral homes and cemeteries throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Based in Jefferson, Louisiana, the company prides itself on offering a complete range of services and products for the recently bereaved, including funeral and burial arrangements.
Business need:
Stewart Enterprises was facing IT challenges in several areas, and chief among them the need for increased business resilience. Given its location in a hurricane-prone area, the company was seeking to add a backup facility in Texas.
Solution:
This case study shows how Stewart Enterprises worked with IBM Business Partner CMA Technology Solutions to implement a new server infrastructure based on the IBM Power® 550 Express platform, leading to reduced Oracle licensing costs and improved business resilience.
Benefits:
· Enabled server consolidation, reducing the number of physical servers from 16 to 2
· Provided comprehensive backup capabilities for improved business resilience
· Reduced Oracle licensing costs by over 50 percent
Case Study
Stewart Enterprises, Inc., owns and operates funeral homes and cemeteries throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Based in Jefferson, Louisiana, the company prides itself on offering a complete range of services and products for the recently bereaved, including funeral and burial arrangements.
Challenge
Stewart Enterprises was facing IT challenges in several areas, and chief among them the need for increased business resilience. Given its location in a hurricane-prone area, the company was seeking to add a backup facility in Texas. Stewart Enterprises also felt the time was right to try to reduce hardware and software administration costs on its mission-critical Oracle database. Furthermore, the company wanted to use an Oracle enterprise backup solution for its human resources and payroll departments, instead of outsourcing them.
Solution
Working with IBM Business Partner CMA Technology Solutions, Stewart Enterprises implemented a new server infrastructure designed to meet the company’s pressing IT needs. The setup consisted of two IBM Power 550 Express servers running IBM AIX, with AIX Fast Connect software to facilitate file sharing with legacy servers. IBM PowerVM technologies were implemented to create four logical partitions in a shared processor environment, used for hosting the company’s Oracle database, content management system, and business intelligence environments, among others. An IBM System Storage TS3310 Tape Library and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager software were added to boost backup and recovery capabilities.
Benefits
· Enabled server consolidation, reducing the number of physical servers from 16 to 2
· Provided comprehensive backup capabilities for improved business resilience
· Reduced Oracle licensing costs by over 50 percent
Products and services used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Hardware:
Power 550 Express, Power Sys running AIX w/ Workload Partitions for same ver of AIX, Power Systems running AIX 6, Storage: TS3310 Tape Library
Software:
AIX, Tivoli Storage Manager, AIX Fast Connect for POWER, Oracle 10g, Oracle 9i
Operating system:
AIX
Legal Information
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010 IBM Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, New York 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America September 2010 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, AIX, Micro-Partitioning, Power, PowerVM, System Storage, and Tivoli are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. IBM and CMA Technology Solutions are separate companies and each is responsible for its own products. Neither IBM nor CMA Technology Solutions makes any warranties, express or implied, concerning the other’s products. References in this publication to IBM products, programs or services do not imply that IBM intends to make these available in all countries in which IBM operates. Offerings are subject to change, extension or withdrawal without notice. All client examples cited represent how some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. POC03034-USEN-00