Two years ago, Louisiana Workers Compensation Corp. officials took a hard look at their information technology set up and didn’t like what they saw:
Two rooms packed with servers and data-storage devices, three software platforms requiring IT workers with specialized skill sets to maintain each, tens of thousands of dollars spent each month running the equipment and keeping it cool, and no end in sight to the ever-widening server and storage footprint.
“Everything was kind of getting out of hand,” said Gary Sanders, LWCC’s information infrastructure services manager. “Every time we put in a new system, they wanted their own physical server.”
A server is a computer that provides services, such as access to files, the Internet or e-mail, to other computers in the network.
Virtualization software makes it look as if one server has been divided into a number of machines. The result is that a company can run multiple versions of an application on the same hardware, or the company can run different applications that use different operating systems on the same hardware.
In effect, one physical server can be divided into a number of virtual servers.
LWCC’s servers weren’t running at anywhere near capacity.
Sanders’ research showed that server virtualization, which allows one server to do the work of many, would increase efficiency while dramatically reducing the costs of hardware, power and staffing.
LWCC went from 72 servers to five, Sanders said. The insurer expects to cut its server spending, the amount it would normally spend on new hardware, by 62 percent over the next four years. Total capital expenses, such as hardware, software, licensing and maintenance, should drop 27 percent. Power consumption costs will be lowered 17 percent.
At the same time, the virtual environment provides LWCC with multiple copies of its data.
“There are just a lot of side benefits. It’s really turned into pretty huge savings,” Sanders said. “We’ve really got a lot of redundancy, a better system. We’re able to support it with less people. There’s really been no downside to it.”
According to Forrester Research, 40 percent of small and mid-sized businesses in North
America now use virtualization technology, an 11 percent increase in the last two years.
