Scottish Water

Story Details

When Scottish Water formed in 2002 from the merger of three former water authorities, one of its mandates was to reduce operating costs by 40 percent. To help reach the aggressive goal, Scottish Water needed to overhaul its five heterogeneous and aging data centers. The IT infrastructure consisted of scores of applications—asset and financial management, human resources and scientific programs—and multiple databases residing on more than 30 legacy Sun, HP and Fujitsu servers. Critical data was siloed in direct-attached storage devices, each with its own backup. The infrastructure also prevented effective disaster recovery (DR). Scottish Water decided to standardize on a single set of applications and business processes, something that could be accomplished only by consolidating its server and storage infrastructure.

To this end, Scottish Water issued an RFP to Sun, HP, IBM and Fujitsu, and after a stringent evaluation, chose Sun. Sun offered a robust technical solution and made the most compelling case for reducing the utility’s total cost of ownership (TCO). Scottish Water also wanted to leverage its IT team’s existing skill sets with Sun technology.

With the help of Sun's consulting services, Scottish Water migrated its IT infrastructure by moving from a heterogeneous mix of more than 30 servers running 80 applications and three databases to a pair of Solaris 9-based Sun Fire 12K servers running 15 applications and a single database. The utility also consolidated its direct-attached storage onto a storage area network (SAN) consisting of two Sun StorageTek 9980 enterprise disk storage systems backed up by Sun StorageTek L700 and L180 tape libraries with SDLT and LTO2 technology. Sun StorageTek ShadowImage software replicates business critical data from the company's Dundee data center to its Glasgow DR site.

To meet new business and application performance demands, Scottish Water then has protected its IT investment in Sun technology by using the Sun Upgrade Advantage Program to upgrade to two Sun Fire 15K UltraSPARC IV-ready servers then to Sun Fire E25K servers with UltraSPARC IV processor system boards, and increasing the capacity of its SAN. To ensure its business-critical server environment runs optimally, Scottish Water chose SunSpectrum Platinum support featuring Sun's highest level of proactive onsite, online support and tools. To invest in professional development, Scottish Water has sent members of its IT staff to Sun training in Sun Fire server, Sun StorageTek 9980 system and Solaris administration.

Consolidating its infrastructure on Sun technology has enabled Scottish Water to reduce operating costs by $10 million annually, streamline system administration, enhance security and cost-effectively scale systems to meet future needs. Scottish Water system availability has increased from 80 percent to 99.8 percent, improving service levels and productivity. The utility has saved $150,000 annually by reducing its IT technical staff from four to two people. Shared storage simplifies both data access for business users and backup for the IT staff. And, with data mirrored at a DR site, Scottish Water is far better prepared to recover quickly from a disaster.

Just as importantly, a consolidated and reliable infrastructure promotes customer confidence. Scottish Water can quickly and easily roll out programs and applications to respond to new business demands, and is focused on making business process improvements that further enhance its efficiency and services.