Baden-Württemberg CAD/CAM Centers

Sun Workstations Improve Instruction in Baden-Württemberg's Universities

The colleges and universities in the German state of Baden-Württemberg—such as the universities of Aalen, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Hohenheim, Karlsruhe, Konstanz, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Tübingen, and Ulm—make the area one of the most education-rich regions in the world. In keeping, the universities’ CAD/CAM centers are consistently recognized for their instructional innovation and excellence.

Customer Challenges

Provision area universities' CAD/CAM centers with robust, flexible infrastructure to support world-class instruction
Ensure cost-efficiency to meet procurement budgets
Enable quick deployment at multiple sites

Solution

The CAD/CAM centers of Baden-Württemberg's universities needed to replace aging legacy equipment to support 21st century instruction and innovation. The Sun solution—comprised of powerful Sun workstations, servers and storage—bested the offerings of more than 40 competitors.

Business Results

Created flexible, scalable architecture capable of supporting a variety of compute-intensive CAD/CAM software
Provided investment protection through superior price-performance and five-year support contract

Products and Services

Sun Ultra 20 Workstation
Sun Fire X4100 server
SunStorageTek 3320 SCSI Array
Sun Installation and Deployment Services

Story Details

In July 2005, when the area universities' legacy equipment was due for replacement, the Baden-Württemberg CAD/CAM steering committee, led by Karlsruhe and Aalen Universities, issued a request for proposals (RFP) to supply new equipment to all the CAD/CAM centers at each of the region’s universities.

This type of procurement exercise takes place every five to six years, and the CAD/CAM steering committee had already been through the process a number of times. The only new twist was that, under recent European Union regulations, the value of the order required that the RFP be issued across Europe, rather than being restricted to Germany as had been the case in the past.

" The computers offered by Sun Microsystems proved themselves to be much more cost-effective than competitive offerings. We selected the Sun solution on the basis of its performance, its scalability, and the widespread use of Sun technology across Baden-Württemberg, as well as the high quality of Circular Informationssysteme GmbH, Sun Microsystems' sales partner and service provider. "

— Prof. Dr. Ing. Wolfgang Hoheisel, Dean, Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences

The pan-European RFP resulted in a flurry of initial interest, and by September, 44 companies had announced their intention to present proposals. But after some consideration, only half a dozen suppliers were deemed capable of equipping the CAD/CAM facilities with the computers they required.

The computers in the CAD/CAM centers support software including Pro/Engineer, Catia and ANSYS. In addition, each university in Baden-Württemberg has its own portfolio of preferred applications, and the CAD/CAM architecture needed to be able to support these as well. Given these challenges, the steering committee was looking first and foremost for a solution that was both powerful and flexible. And although price was a secondary consideration, the committee wanted to ensure that its investment in the new technology would be protected.

The winning solution, therefore, wouldn’t have to represent the least expensive option, but rather the best price performance, and would be selected through a meticulous value analysis of each bid, with points being awarded on each of the key criteria. The Sun solution won on all counts.

Sun Advantage Partner Circular Informationssysteme GmbH served as a single point of contact for the deployment. When the order was placed in early 2006, Circular researched and was responsible for fulfilling each university’s individual requirements, managing the logistics and coordinating the various service partners for each deployment.

The initial order, consisting of 312 Sun Ultra 20 high-performance workstations with dual-core AMD Opteron processors and high-end NVIDIA 3D graphics cards, was delivered as agreed in February 2006. The hardware is certified for Microsoft operating systems, which allows for flexible use of the equipment and rules out any potential service problems from the outset.

Despite minor glitches, the initial deployment went smoothly, and the first order was rapidly followed by the second, which comprised 209 mid-range workstations intended for use in basic CAD training, plus an additional five high-end workstations. The mid-range systems are also based on Sun Ultra 20, although they offer slightly less processing and graphics power. Nine Sun Fire X4100 servers with dual-core AMD Opteron processors were also deployed. Each of the X4100 servers is paired with a Sun StorageTek 3320 SCSI array with a capacity of 1.75 TB. The architecture deployed at each CAD/CAM center site is nearly identical to the other sites, and varies only in the number of workstations deployed.

Students and instructors took to the new architecture immediately, and the amount of study, project and lab work being done has risen significantly since the deployment.

Ongoing support is provided through Circular, who is on hand to provide assistance under a five-year service agreement.