A prominent global automotive supplier based in North America is widely recognized for its dedication to innovation, operational efficiency, and sustainable manufacturing practices. Partnering with numerous original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) across the globe, the company leverages advanced technology to power its operations and sustain its competitive advantage.
Business Challenge
To support its manufacturing plants across multiple regions, the company’s critical software runs on IBM Power systems. However, with its Power8 hardware nearing end-of-service, the company faced challenges, including the lack of IBM maintenance services, security patches, and machine code updates for aging infrastructure. Additionally, the anticipated capital expenditure required to upgrade its Power estate posed a financial strain, prompting the company to seek a more cost-effective, reliable, and future-proof solution to sustain its operations.
Adding to these challenges, the company sought to optimize its migration process to the cloud. The existing approach was inefficient, requiring extensive time and resources. This is where FalconStor's StorSafe solution played a crucial role in streamlining the transition.
The IBM Solution
IBM Power Virtual Server (PowerVS) and IBM Cloud emerged as the ideal solution to address the company’s challenges. PowerVS offered a robust, cloud-based environment to support critical workloads, with benefits that included:
- Reliability: PowerVS provides a failover solution with high availability and disaster recovery capabilities, ensuring seamless operations for production workloads and ensuring critical business processes continue with minimal disruption.
- Proven Feasibility: A successful proof of concept (PoC) demonstrated that the company’s manufacturing software could run effectively on PowerVS, building the confidence needed for a transition from on-premises systems to the cloud.
- Cost Savings: By shifting from Capex to Opex, the company avoided costly hardware upgrades while benefiting from flexible pay-as-you-use billing.
- Improved Performance: Leveraging Power10 servers, PowerVS offered enhanced performance and scalability to meet the company’s evolving needs.
FalconStor's Critical Role
FalconStor enhanced the cloud migration process by addressing inefficiencies in transitioning workloads. Initially, the migration process using the company’s legacy approach required extensive manual configuration, consuming up to 40 hours per location. FalconStor’s StorSafe solution reduced this to just 4 hours, significantly expediting the transition while lowering operational costs.
Customer Buy-In
A proof of concept (PoC) validated the efficiency of FalconStor’s StorSafe solution, demonstrating faster setup times and cost reductions. Feedback from the customer’s IT leadership reinforced the solution’s viability, emphasizing its potential long-term benefits.
Use Case
The company utilized IBM Power Virtual Server and FalconStor's Storsafe solution for various operational needs, including:
- Development and Testing (Dev/Test)
- Pre-Production and Production environments
The solution runs on IBM i operating system with custom application workloads.
Conclusion
By migrating to IBM Power Virtual Server and leveraging FalconStor's StorSafe solution, the client modernized its IT infrastructure, aligning with its goals of innovation and efficiency. FalconStor’s contribution significantly optimized deployment efficiency, reducing migration time and associated costs. This cloud-based solution not only resolved the challenges posed by aging hardware but also enabled the company to focus on its core mission: delivering sustainable, high-quality solutions to the automotive industry. With IBM Power Virtual Server and FalconStor's StorSafe, the client is well-positioned to drive future growth and maintain its competitive edge in the global market.
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