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FREEZE.COM

• Project lead: Kyle Ohme, IT director
• Technology focus: Servers - automated provisioning

In a new data center-style project, this Waite Park, Minn., provider of downloadable desktop software sought a way to handle peak server loads without overbuilding the infrastructure needed for quieter periods. In addition, it wanted to be able to repurpose servers on the fly and reduce IT staff time needed for server provisioning. IT selected the Ardence Server Edition server-management tool, which enables the on-demand streaming of Windows from commodity networked storage. When IT needs to reprovision a server, it uses the Ardence software to stream the operating system and associated applications to a blade in its IBM BladeCenter. The download includes just enough of the operating system software to get the blade executing; additional libraries follow when required for the operation. IT can now provision servers in five minutes vs. the previous five hours and move capacity from server to server, and has quadrupled productivity. Freeze.com has about $1,750 per blade invested in this model, with three fully populated blade centers and two more in staging. This model has enabled IT to reduce at least two full-time server administrator positions and place an increased focus on issues that have an impact on the bottom line.

INTELLIDYN

• Project lead: Rajeev Kumar, technical director
• Technology focus: Servers - data warehouse

With a $2 million budget, this data warehouse provider in Hingham, Mass., migrated from a mainframe-based, vendor-specific computing infrastructure to a scalable, highly available and reliable open architecture. Intellidyn collocates the infrastructure, which is powered by Sun servers running Solaris 8, at an AT&T data center. For its storage-area network, the company combines Sun and Hitachi Fibre Channel storage arrays, uses StorageTek tape libraries and handles consolidation, back-up and restore capabilities and clustering via the Veritas Foundation software suite. SAS provides business-intelligence tools. Intellidyn expects to realize a 685% ROI in year one as it becomes more agile.