The Fit for Passkeys for Employee and Consumer Sign-ins: FIDO Paris Seminar.pptx
Cloud - Acxiom Case StudyOrganic web assetNew asset
1. IBM Smarter Computing
Acxiom transforms
marketing services with
the help of IBM
Acxiom Corporation is a recognized leader in marketing services and
Overview technology that enable marketers to successfully manage audiences,
personalize consumer experiences and create profitable customer
The need relationships. The company has amassed a 12.2 petabyte database—one
Facing continued growth and an already
massive IT infrastructure, Acxiom needed
of the world’s largest Oracle instances—that houses information on 500
to find a smarter way to grow their million customers globally. With this consumer insight, Acxiom is able
services—without growing the data to help their customers dramatically improve marketing results by
center.
enabling them to engage the right audiences at the right time with
The solution relevant messages.
Acxiom created a cloud computing
environment based on the “Our customers are some of the largest and most influential brand
high-performance IBM® eX5 enterprise
portfolio, deploying new and existing names in the world,” says David Guzmán, senior vice president and
customer environments on the IBM chief information officer for Acxiom. “With this consumer multi-
System x® 3850 X5 platform. dimensional insight, Acxiom helps our customers to filter out the false
The benefit signals of single-dimensional views, leading to higher-performing
The IBM eX5 solution delivers 5 times the alternatives that maximize customer value at every interaction.”
performance at 15 times less cost, and
has enabled Acxiom to scale services
Operations of this scale require a massive IT infrastructure. To start
dramatically without expanding the
footprint of the data center. with, Acxiom has 23,500 servers running in a 250,000-square-foot data
center in Little Rock, Arkansas. The majority of these servers are used
to provide dedicated environments for many of the company’s 8,700
customers, and as such, they reflect the full range of IT platforms and
technologies. But as the size and complexity of the Acxiom environment
increased, the company realized that they couldn’t accommodate new
growth by simply continuing to add servers. “We knew there had to be
a better way—a smarter way of managing this amount of data and this
amount of processing for our customers. We knew we had to
transform,” says Guzmán.
2. IBM Smarter Computing
Transformation you can measure
Integrated Acxiom found the power to transform by creating a cloud computing
• Seamlessly integrated a new environment based on the high-performance IBM eX5 enterprise
high-performance server platform with portfolio. For the past year, Acxiom has been deploying new customer
existing network, ESB, systems
management, data warehouse, and environments on the IBM System x3850 X5 platform, and migrating
virtualization technologies existing customer environments as they come up for refresh. Around
• Implemented a cloud computing 100 eX5 servers have been deployed so far, with some customer
environment as part of a dynamic and
diverse IT infrastructure and
workloads achieving virtualization ratios as high as 35:1.
service-oriented architecture
“The server numbers seem modest, but it’s a testament to the power of
Automated
the platform,” says Guzmán. “Ten eX5 platforms would be replacing
• Automated notification to alert systems
administrators to changes or potential 350 servers, and that’s significant.”
system failures
• Automated node failover to help But Guzmán has captured even more impressive numbers. While
improve the availability of multi-node
systems, ensuring high service levels
enabling massive consolidation rates, the eX5 platform has delivered 5
times the performance of the previous dedicated servers—and at 15
Secured times less cost. In addition to these cost savings, the transformation has
• Secured dedicated customer
environments with segmentation,
yielded a reduction in power requirements of more than a megawatt.
firewall protection and data encryption And the reliability has been stellar, with no production issues since the
• Implemented memory reliability solution went live.
features to help maintain data integrity
Transformed Seamless integration, strong security
• Scaled the environment elegantly, Acxiom’s eX5 implementation is just one part of the company’s
adding 2,700 new servers without
expanding the data center footprint heterogeneous IT infrastructure, operating within the company’s IBM
• Retained key customers and captured WebSphere®-based service-oriented architecture. Guzmán says the
new business as a result of outstanding eX5 is an integral part of the environment, integrating seamlessly with
cost/performance, rapid time to
market, and high virtualization ratios
the Cisco network, F5 load balancing and firewall, WebSphere
Enterprise Service Bus, data warehouse environments such as IBM
InfoSphere™ DataStage® and Netezza, a systems management
software suite, and a variety of virtualization technologies, including
VMware.
Standardizing on the eX5 for the cloud environment has provided a
welcome reprieve from the longstanding diversity of the Acxiom data
center—a natural result of meeting the unique needs of thousands of
customers. “We were falling under the weight of the size and scale and
variety of solutions that we have—and the variety of customers that we
support as a service provider,” explains Guzmán. “And when we can take
all that complexity and reduce it down so that we can provide simple,
cost-effective, powerful solutions to our customers, that’s a compelling
story for us.”
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3. IBM Smarter Computing
The eX5 provides a number of built-in features that help Acxiom
Solution Components: deliver high levels of service to their customers. Continuous system
monitoring triggers automated notifications that alert systems
Software administrators to changes or potential system failures. And automatic
• IBM® WebSphere® ESB
• IBM InfoSphere™ DataStage®
node failover helps improve the availability of multi-node systems.
Hardware Protecting the data within those systems is critical. “Securing our data
• IBM System x® 3850 X5
is job one,” says Guzmán. “That data is our customer’s gold.” Dedicated
customer environments running on the eX5 platform are clearly
segmented, highly secured, and firewall-protected. Data is encrypted in
transit and at rest. The eX5’s memory reliability features also help
maintain data integrity.
The bottom-line benefits
Acxiom has already tested the scalability of the environment, adding
2,700 servers in the past year. Prior to the cloud implementation, that
would have surely meant expanding the data center—or building a new
one. But with the eX5 solution in place, the new servers were absorbed
without impact. Says Guzmán, “Despite the fact that our business is
increasing and we’re deploying more resources with more processing
power, we haven’t had to invest in new data center space. We’re able to
do all that within the same footprint.”
Not only is the cloud solution enabling powerful scalability, it has also
dramatically improved Acxiom’s time to market, allowing the company
to on-board new customers in a fraction of the time. “Each customer
environment is different, but as an example, an implementation that
previously would have taken three months would now take three
weeks,” says Guzmán. “The fact that we’ve been able to get these
platforms in and get them up and running in production very quickly
has made the difference in our business.”
It’s a difference that Acxiom has been able to use for competitive
advantage, along with leveraging the platform’s high performance and
reliability. “As a service provider, we believe we’ve won new business
and retained key customers as a result of the factors that the IBM eX5
brings to the table,” says Guzmán. “Every time an existing customer
comes up for a refresh, we bid this platform, and so far our success rate
has been 100 percent.”
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