With an IBM p-Series solution designed by thinkASG, Mitchell International drives away with better performance in a compact form.
Case Study: Consolidating For Growth
Mitchell International, Inc. is a leading provider of data, software and e-business solutions for the automotive collision industry. Mitchell’s clientele include automotive insurance, collision repair, medical claims and glass replacement businesses.
THE PROBLEM
Over the past several years, Mitchell has expanded rapidly. Today, they handle several million transactions with over 16,000 partners each month.
While business has been booming, however, Mitchell’s IT infrastructure has faced serious challenges in keeping pace with the company’s growth. Problems included:
* Inability to accommodate new services and delivery methods.
* A patchwork of aging servers that required multiple operating systems and staff cross training.
* Costs and environmental concerns associated with excess space and energy consumption.
* Cumbersome infrastructure requiring constant maintenance.
* Steady high operating costs not reflective of Mitchell’s fluctuating processing demands.
For John Pantarolo, Senior Director, Server Systems and Communications at Mitchell, the bottom line is: “Our servers have to be up and stay up, and they have to deliver top performance at all times.”
THE SOLUTION
thinkASG architected and implemented a server consolidation solution for Mitchell that put its performance into overdrive, while curbing costs through a much simpler IT infrastructure.
The experts at thinkASG migrated Mitchell’s entire UNIX processing system into just three IBM pSeries servers. These 18-way 590’s now run the entire business, hosting application, development, production, integration and testing environments.
“Mitchell really had no choice but to consolidate both physically and virtually if their business continued to grow at the same pace,” says Dave Henn, Senior Account Executive at thinkASG, “This set the foundation for the decision to move to the IBM Blade Center architecture, with all the benefits of virtualization.”
“What really gave thinkASG and IBM the edge was how well they supported our entire evaluation process and the depth of their knowledge and expertise,” Mr. Pontarolo explains. “thinkASG demonstrated to us how we could immediately take advantage of IBM’s virtual micro-partitioning technology – which would give us the flexibility and ease of management we were seeking.”
THE RESULT
Today, Mitchell’s operations are more flexible, powerful and efficient than ever before. As a result, they have cut costs, improved customer service and prepared for future growth.
Customer Service
Mitchell’s customer service offering has improved as a result of the server implementation:
* Information, once provided only in book form, is now delivered electronically.
* Clients now draw on a suite of applications that streamline the claims process.
* New applications deliver sophisticated estimation, communication and analysis of claims information.
* The new e-business portal eliminates costs and inefficiencies from the claims management process, while boosting customer satisfaction.
Economy
The new infrastructure has improved cost efficiency in several ways:
* Partitioning enables resource sharing for horsepower optimization.
* Consolidated servers eliminate redundant maintenance and employee cross-training.
* Consolidation reduces software licensing costs.
* The new system occupies ¼ of the previous space.
* The new system has significantly reduced cooling costs.
Scalability On Demand
Perhaps the biggest benefit to a growing, innovating business like Mitchell is the On Demand Operating Environment the solution has created.
“The spare processing power is all there; Mitchell simply has to turn it on as needed,” notes Mr. Henn. “With this solution, they have constant scalability, and the option of pay-as-you-go capacity – something that fits perfectly with the on demand nature of Mitchell’s business.”
Mr. Pontarolo adds, “If I have to support a new product from one of our business divisions, or scale to meet customer volume, I know I can do it, quickly and easily. I can add a CPU, I can change the partition and not affect my shrinking maintenance window.”
Partnering for the Future
“This has been a good experience for us,” says Mr. Pontarolo. “thinkASG has been very helpful and knowledgeable, and brought in the right experts at the right time. We’re now looking at how we can apply similar benefits of consolidation to our entire inventory of Intel based machines.”
