For more than three decades, it has been CCCi’s privilege and pleasure to help hundreds of clients achieve their business objectives through technology solutions. Here we present a small sample of our many client case studies; we encourage you to contact us to learn more about the breadth and depth of our success stories.

Triples server density, reduces costs and realizes a rapid ROI for IT Infrastructure investment.

The Client

A provider of electricity and electricity-based products and services, energy efficiency options and renewable energy programs in Texas.

The Client’s Need

The client had selected and made a substantial investment in VMware to virtualize their server environment. However, after the initial deployment, it was going to take years instead of months to achieve a reasonable return on their investment. The energy provider needed a way to deploy VMware software without incurring additional costs for more licenses and hardware.

The Solution CCCi Provided

CCCi, through its Infrastructure Optimization services helps companies realize the full value of their IT investments by enabling them to architect, implement, optimize and secure their technology infrastructures. The energy provider lacked the in-house expertise needed to optimize their environment so that costs could be reduced and benefits from the investment achieved. The company turned to CCCi after evaluating several outside providers for the project. CCCi has a long, successful track record of delivering customized IT services, and employing skilled, experienced IT professionals.

“We provided VMware consultants who on a previous engagement had created the type of solution the energy provider needed. At a time when many IT professionals were just beginning to get experience with VMware, and making the inevitable mistakes that comes with learning something new, we had already determined how to fix the mistakes. In fact, we’ve been helping our clients with their virtualization projects since 2005,” said Jeff Hallan, Regional Director for CCCi’s Dallas, TX office.

CCCi’s Infrastructure Optimization Approach

• Hardware Configuration
  To enable the client to achieve greater usage of its VMware investment, CCCi first focused on the hardware itself. The servers had run out of memory which meant the client would have to purchase more hardware to keep pace. However, a closer look at the servers revealed that the memory had not been maxed out and there was room to increase memory on the servers. With an investment of $20K, relatively insignificant compared to the amount already spent, we doubled the memory on each server thereby doubling the density of each host.
  
  
• Software Implementation
  CCCi focused on the software next. The client was running older versions of VMware, which limiting utilization. CCCi built a completely new infrastructure using the existing hardware. Essentially, we would take one existing server and rebuild it with the latest version of VMware tripling the density.
  
  
• Policies and Procedures
  Lastly, there were no policies and procedures developed when the VMware software was initially implemented. CCCi developed policies and procedures around new virtual machines that would provide guidance on memory, what should and should not be deployed and what should be eliminated.
  
  

The Results the Client Achieved
CCCi delivered the expertise including project management, architecture and engineering along with industry best practices in large scale VMware infrastructure to help the utility and energy provider reduce:

• The number of physical servers from 1000 to 80
• Network switches from 84 to 10
• Kilowatts per hour from 407 to 57
• Real estate needed from 2,053 square feet to 257 square feet

The total savings, beyond the ROI from its initial VMware implementation, was $8.2 million over a three-year period.