Uptime Home Now, Let's Make IT Invisible Achieving a Lean, Green IT Machine Data Center Virtualization in Action

Blade computing and virtualization are two of the hottest trends in the server market. Learn how these maturing technologies combine to deliver "Virtualization 2.0," helping your business deliver higher levels of availability, dynamic scalability, and better levels of IT service. Download your free copy of IDC's white paper, Egenera: Virtualization for the Dynamic Data Center, sponsored by Egenera, July 2007.

Egenera Expands Processing Blade Family with Four New Blades Based on Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 7300 Series Egenera announced it will expand its Egenera® Processing Blade™ (pBlade™) module family with four new offerings based on the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 7350 processor. The new pBlades will include 16, 32, 64 and 96GB memory configurations, representing Egenera's largest memory offering to date.  Read this press release Egenera Signs OEM Agreement with VMware Under the terms of the agreement, Egenera BladeFrame® system customers will be able to purchase VMware Infrastructure 3 solutions and support from Egenera and its resellers beginning in Q4 2007.  Read this press release

InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum September 24-25, 2007 New York City, NY Breakout Session "Vendor Crossfire:x86 Server Virtualization" Panelist:  Vern Brownell SAP TechEd October 1-5, 2007 Mandalay Bay Las Vegas, NV See Egenera in Microsoft's Booth #10 TechTarget Virtualization Seminar November 15, 2007 New York City, NY

Data Center Virtualization in Action

"With Egenera, we don't have to hire consultants to manage it. It just works."
    —Glenn Rappaport, director of IT at Sport & Health

Data center virtualization goes beyond hypervisors, combining server virtualization with network and storage virtualization to transform data center infrastructure into flexible, changeable assets. Companies as diverse as RCM, Pioneer Investments and Sport & Health are leveraging Egenera's data center virtualization solutions to achieve strategic advantage.

For RCM, that advantage lies in Egenera's unparalleled ease of management and reliable disaster recovery capabilities. For Pioneer Investments, it was the dynamic reprovisioning and reallocation of assets. And for Sport & Health, their small IT staff was sold on how the Egenera solution reduced complexity and consolidated infrastructure.

RCM
RCM Capital Management, a global asset management firm, has chosen Egenera to centralize its global technology and services.  RCM will run mission critical global trading, reporting, research, business intelligence and business information exchange systems on the Egenera® BladeFrame® supporting both Sun® Solaris™ and Microsoft® Windows®-based applications. With Egenera, RCM will effectively manage services in its offices in Frankfurt, London, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Sydney and Tokyo, and ensure high availability and disaster recovery for remote locations.

Ease of management was a crucial deciding factor for RCM while evaluating solutions from several vendors.

"The first thing we noticed, and the most exciting feature, was how simple server management was using Egenera PAN Manager software," said Jeff Wood, IT director, RCM Capital Management.  "Everything from network, server and processor allocation could be managed all under one very easy to use interface.  Our IT staff had the power to create virtual networks and servers immediately."

Building a reliable, global disaster recovery solution was another critical business need for RCM. With Egenera, RCM was able to deploy a documented, tested and 100 percent repeatable DR solution designed to enable recovery in minutes, instead of days, and streamline DR processes and steps.

Pioneer Investments
Pioneer Investments has selected Egenera as the platform to support its mission critical PeopleSoft infrastructure and other applications.  With over $50 billion in assets under management, Pioneer offers investment management services to institutional investors and individuals, and is an investment manager for over 50 mutual funds.

Pioneer relies heavily on a mission critical infrastructure for ongoing reporting comprised of Oracle-PeopleSoft Financials accessed through Citrix® Presentation Server™.  Serving thousands of end-users globally, there was a clear need for high availability as well as high performance throughput, and a flexible platform for building a dynamic infrastructure to best support changes in priorities.  Pioneer chose Egenera to dynamically reprovision resources, consolidate infrastructure, remove bottlenecks, and take advantage of the inherent N+1 failover and high availability of the Egenera BladeFrame system.  The Egenera system, which was in full production at Pioneer in less than three weeks, has already cut reporting time significantly.

"Supporting any mission critical system means the platform has to be low-latency, scalable, secure and always available—those are givens.  But we also knew we needed a better way to get more out of our infrastructure—dynamically reallocating resources as needed, depending on the time of day or night.  Egenera proved they could meet all of our growing needs," said Christopher Chapin, vice president of Infrastructure Services at Pioneer.  "Every move we make from a technology perspective has to accommodate our growth, as well as entry into new markets.  We see Egenera as a key platform moving forward with other strategic applications and initiatives."

Sport& Health
Sport & Health, a large health club company in North America, has chosen Egenera as the foundation for its new data center strategy. Sport & Health will run its business critical membership management application, as well as databases and other back office systems, on the Egenera BladeFrame to simplify data center operations and manage numerous remote locations more effectively.

In addition to reducing complexity and consolidating infrastructure, Sport & Health needed to dramatically streamline the process of synchronizing multiple databases in order to effectively scale business operations. They evaluated systems from several vendors, including Egenera, IBM and HP, and selected Egenera technology based on its proven ability to measurably simplify data center operations, and provide out-of-the-box remote management and high availability for critical applications across sites.

"As soon as we spoke with Egenera, the light came on. We knew it was exactly what we had been looking for.  Egenera gives us instant, built-in redundancy and powerful virtualization capabilities, which are critical in managing multiple facilities," said Glenn Rappaport, director of IT at Sport & Health. 

"Egenera understands that infrastructure doesn't have to be complicated. Ultimately, we were looking for simplicity and performance—something the other vendors didn't even attempt to provide. With Egenera, we don't have to hire consultants to manage it. It just works. Those are the kinds of companies we like to do business with—those that simplify a process and deliver results."

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