To reduce costs and remain competitive, Regionalgas Euskirchen migrated from its HP servers to IBM Flex System servers, virtualizing workloads and reducing its server footprint by 66%. This cut energy costs by 20% and avoided $45,000 in air conditioning upgrades. It also upgraded switches, reducing their number by 80% for easier management. The new highly scalable system improves application performance, cutting report generation time by two-thirds, and positions the company for future growth.

1. Energy & Utilities
Regionalgas Euskirchen
beats competitors to new
business
Cutting IT operational costs by migrating to the IBM
Flex System offering
Overview
Founded in 1949, Regionalgas Euskirchen GmbH & Co. KG supplies
water and energy to around 60,000 private households, companies and
public organizations based in the vicinity of Euskirchen, Germany.
The need
As intense competition drives prices
down, utilities provider Regionalgas
Euskirchen must reduce operational costs
and offer even better value in order to
retain existing customers and win new
ones.
The solution
The company decided to consolidate
its HP servers onto the highly scalable
IBM® Flex System™ platform, and
upgrade its network capabilities with
high-performance IBM technology.
The benefit
Cuts server footprint by 66 percent,
energy costs by 20 percent and avoiding
USD 45,000 cost of air conditioning
spend, helping the company offer great
value to customers and stay ahead of
competitors.
Over the past few years, the German energy market has been
liberalized, sparking intense competition among approximately
700 energy providers. Having lost its monopoly on the local energy
market, Regionalgas Euskirchen found that its profit margins were
being squeezed as competitors tried to undercut its prices. It began
looking for ways to cut operational costs to help it offer even better
prices to customers and beat competitors to new business.
At the same time, the company realized that it needed to find a
more powerful IT platform to support future growth. Regionalgas
Euskirchen had plans to acquire water and electricity utilities; this
expansion would boost staffing levels by around 33 percent and increase
demands on the company’s IT systems.
Unfortunately, the utility’s existing IT environment was unable to
provide the performance and scalability required to support the
demands of the growing business. Regionalgas Euskirchen engaged
stepIT.net, an IBM Business Partner specializing in consultancy and
managed services, to help it find a more scalable, cost-efficient platform
for its business applications.
Benefits of virtualization
The company decided to consolidate its six racks, each containing
six HP servers, onto just two IBM Flex System chassis, each one
located in a separate data center to reduce the risk of an outage in the
event of a disaster. The Flex System chassis are connected to IBM
System x® 3650 M4 class servers, and IBM System Storage® TS3100
tape libraries in the company’s backup environment. Each IBM Flex
System chassis contains six fully virtualized IBM FlexSystem x240
compute nodes, running a total of 110 VMware virtual servers.

2. Energy & Utilities
Solution components
Hardware
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
IBM® Flex System™
IBM Flex System Fabric EN4093 10Gb
Scalable Switches
IBM Flex System Fabric FC5022 16Gb
Scalable Switches
IBM Flex System x240
IBM System Networking RackSwitch™
G8124 switches
IBM System Storage® TS3100 tape
libraries
IBM System x® 3650 M4
Software
•
•
IBM Notes®
IBM Domino®
IBM Business Partner
•
stepIT.net
Thorsten Bollig, Head of IT Infrastructure at Regionalgas Euskirchen,
remarks, “By consolidating six full HP racks onto just two IBM Flex
System machines, we reduced our server footprint by 66 percent and
cut energy costs by 20 percent. Physical servers generate a lot of heat,
and we realized that expanding our existing server infrastructure would
have required an upgrade of the air conditioning system in our data
centers. By choosing a highly virtualized solution based on IBM Flex
System servers, we were able to avoid replacing the air conditioning,
which saved around EUR35,000 [USD45,000].”
stepIT.net implemented the IBM solution and provided expert advice
and support throughout the project, helping Regionalgas Euskirchen
complete the project on time and on budget.
Powerful network infrastructure
Regionalgas Euskirchen also upgraded its data center network
infrastructures by replacing HP switches with IBM Flex System Fabric
EN4093 10Gb and FC5022 16Gb Scalable Switch solutions. Providing
outstanding scalability, the switches enable the company to activate
additional ports quickly and easily as demands on the network increase.
The company also renewed the network infrastructure that links its
two data centers, replacing its existing HP switches with IBM System
Networking RackSwitch™ G8124 switches, which provide 24 10Gb
Ethernet ports for high performance.
Oliver Moritz, Head of IT at Regionalgas Euskirchen, comments, “By
replacing our HP switches with more advanced IBM technology, we
have been able to reduce the total number of switches by approximately
80 percent, making our networking infrastructure much easier to
manage.”
Making better business decisions
The IBM solution provides excellent performance for Regionalgas
Euskirchen’s business-critical applications, including its IBM Notes®
and Domino® collaboration solutions. The company uses IBM Notes
and Domino applications to manage every stage of its core business
processes: collecting contact details when potential customers make
inquiries, connecting the customer site to the company network,
managing the delivery of energy, and processing payments.
Maximizing efficiency
“By consolidating six full HP racks onto just two IBM Flex System machines, we reduced our server footprint by 66 percent
and cut energy costs by 20 percent. By choosing a highly virtualized solution based on IBM Flex System servers, we were able
to avoid replacing the air conditioning, which saved around EUR35,000 [USD45,000],” says Thorsten Bollig, Head of IT
Infrastructure at Regionalgas Euskirchen.

3. Energy & Utilities
“We have dramatically cut
response times for our core
business applications. For
example, it used to take
15 minutes to generate
one particular report.
With IBM Flex System,
we can generate the same
report in just a third of
the time!”
—Oliver Moritz, Head of IT, Regionalgas
Euskirchen
Regionalgas Euskirchen also uses the IBM Notes and Domino solution
to generate executive reports, equipping decision-makers with the
information they need.
Oliver Moritz remarks, “We have dramatically cut response times
for our core business applications. For example, it used to take 15
minutes to generate one particular report. With IBM Flex System,
we can generate the same report in just a third of the time!
Accelerating reporting processes makes staff more likely to conduct
thorough analyses, and base their business decisions on accurate,
up-to-the-minute data.”
Supporting the growing business
By selecting IBM Flex System solutions, Regionalgas Euskirchen can
deploy further compute nodes or activate additional resources on the
switches as demands on the systems increase.
Thorsten Bollig comments, “The IBM Flex System solution scales up
to the meet the future demands of our business, and will be particularly
important when we integrate the water utility into our operations.”
Future-proof investment
Regionalgas Euskirchen estimates that the cost of deploying the
Flex System solution was around 10 percent lower than the main
competing solution. In the long term, the company expects the
virtualized solution to cut energy costs by 20 percent, reduce
maintenance costs, and help postpone costly investments in new
hardware. Cutting operational costs helps Regionalgas Euskirchen
provide better value energy to its customers, and beat competitors to
new business.
Oliver Moritz concludes, “We are very impressed by the scalability and
reliability of the IBM offering. We are confident that the IBM solution
will support the current and future demands of our business, and save
us money at the same time!”
For more information
To learn more about IBM solutions, contact your IBM
sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit us at
ibm.com/systems/flex
To learn more about products, services and solutions from stepIT.net,
please visit www.stepit.net
To learn more about Regionalgas Euskirchen, please visit
www.regionalgas.de

4. © Copyright IBM Corporation 2013
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Produced in Germany
September 2013
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