Intent to save millions over the next three years
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Aug. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Nationwide, one of the world's
largest diversified insurance and financial services organizations,
announced it has completed deployment of a virtualization solution running
SUSE Linux from Novell on IBM mainframe computers to help the company
reduce the total cost of ownership of its IT environment. Nationwide is
sharing the success of the solution by participating in a keynote
presentation at LinuxWorld on August 16.
Running two IBM System z900 servers on Linux, Nationwide is deploying
hundreds of virtual servers onto the mainframe systems to help it reduce
the costs of data-center floor space, power, and Web hosting. A study in
2005 suggested the savings could be tens of millions of dollars over the
next three years.
Prior to the deployment, Nationwide determined that 78 percent of its
distributed servers were using ten percent of the computing capacity,
leaving a vast amount of its server capability untapped. Consequently, the
company spent valuable resources and time maintaining costly servers that
took up expensive data center space, consumed energy and used only a small
fraction of the available computing power.
With the new solution, virtualization features in the mainframe enable
Nationwide to quickly create new virtual Linux-based servers in minutes.
The company can now support and consolidate additional workloads and run
hundreds of disparate applications on a single, or two, mainframe computers
rather than on thousands of physical servers it would have otherwise have
purchased.
By creating virtual servers rather than physical ones, Nationwide can
better manage its data center power consumption, and improve utilization by
more than 80 percent. As a result, the virtualization-based solution
enabled Nationwide to defer the expenses that it would have incurred in
data center expansion, cooling and electricity costs.
Taking advantage of virtualization technologies, the company now has
greater flexibility to boost the computing capacity needed to handle spikes
in demand. For example, Nationwide promoted its re-branded Web site by
advertising heavily during Super Bowl XL. They significantly increased
computing capacity for a two-week period to handle increased traffic to
http://www.nationwide.com, then decreased capacity after the event. Capacity on
demand is an attractive feature of server virtualization to a company like
Nationwide.
"Virtualizing Nationwide's IT environment on IBM mainframes running
Linux has allowed us to significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of
our Web hosting environment by leveraging open source technology, such as
SUSE Linux, instead of getting tied to proprietary solutions," said Guru
Vasudeva, AVP and Enterprise Chief Architect at Nationwide. "New
virtualization capabilities will also help us provision new Web hosting
environments in days rather than months."
"Customers like Nationwide are increasingly turning to open IBM
virtualization solutions to improve efficiency, reduce server sprawl, and
boost power consumption," said Rich Lechner, vice president,
Virtualization, IBM. "IBM is delighted to partner with Nationwide to
showcase this world class example of how an enterprise can earn a
significant return on its IT investment with innovative open
standards-based information technology solutions."
Nationwide, based in Columbus, Ohio, is one of the largest diversified
insurance and financial services organizations in the world, with more than
$158 billion in assets. Nationwide ranks #98 on the Fortune 100 list. The
company provides a full range of insurance and financial services,
including auto, motorcycles, boats, homeowners, life, commercial insurance,
administrative services, annuities, mortgages, mutual funds, pensions and
long-term savings plans. The Nationwide companies include the country's
seventh-largest property/casualty, the fourth-largest homeowners, the
sixth- largest auto insurance group and the country's largest farm owners
insurer. Nationwide Life Insurance Company, the major subsidiary of
Nationwide Financial, ranks 11th in assets according to A.M. Best. For more
information, visit http://www.nationwide.com.
Nationwide and the Nationwide Framemark are federally registered
service marks of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. On Your Side is a
service mark of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company.
Contact:
Liz Christopher (614) 249-7705
christe1@nationwide.com
SOURCE Nationwide
 back to top
Related links:
http://www.nationwide.com
http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/events/12BOS06A
http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/607050.html/
CONTACT:
Liz Christopher of Nationwide,
+1-614-249-7705, or christe1@nationwide.com
|
