A.Schulman chooses FlexPod and Backup as a Service

A. Schulman is streamlining its European operations, based on a centrally managed IT environment. At A. Schulman, Proact implemented FlexPod, allowing the company to reduce its server park by 80 percent.

A. Schulman is migrating its European country organization to a fully integrated European company structure. As a result, the company is also carrying out a comprehensive ICT integration exercise at European level. The consolidation of the European server park proved to be one of the major challenges. "First of all, we made a list of all the servers that were in use across our European sites", said Wim Nagels, ICT Director EMEA at A. Schulman. "The list contained no less than 160 physical servers: a very heterogeneous server park that offered little to no ground for integration."
A. Schulman decided to consolidate its server environment over a period of one to two years, starting with a limited scope, based on FlexPod. Storage and cloud integrator Proact’s solution FlexPod is a data center platform for hosting virtualized applications. The platform combines products from NetApp, Cisco and VMware.

Wim Nagels: "FlexPod offers the flexibility we need. We can set up new virtualized servers in a matter of minutes, quickly responding to our business needs. FlexPod also allows us to quickly roll out a standardized IT environment throughout our entire European organization." Additionally, Proact implemented Backupas a Service of Proact as the backup solution for A. Schulman’s business critical systems. Wim Nagels: "Using FlexPod, we expect to reduce our server park by 80 percent."