Merkl IT

German Systems Vendor Taps Sun Server, Storage and Virtual Desktop Solutions to Deliver Affordable Cloud Computing

Merkl IT offers IT services, based on industry-standard software, primarily for small and medium-sized businesses. With the company’s core product, Virtual BackOffice, businesses gain a virtual IT infrastructure that is highly scalable and available. It gives them access to their data and applications from almost any location with very little hardware required onsite. Merkl IT was also an early member of the Sun Startup Essentials Program.

Customer Challenges

Provide a scalable cloud-computing solution
Offer a resilient solution with high availability and quick response times
Make its solution energy efficient

Solution

Merkl IT relies on Sun storage and servers as the basis for its hosted infrastructure solution known as Virtual BackOffice. By using the Sun technology, Merkl IT can deliver cloud computing that is scalable, reliable, energy-efficient, and flexible and that reduces the IT costs for medium-sized businesses.

Business Results

Implemented an energy-efficient solution with high resilience and availability
Delivered fast IT-provider response times
Provided investment protection

Products and Services

Story Details

Typically, when people think of cloud computing, they think of large enterprises with giant server farms — but Merkl IT is changing that perception. A Munich-based systems vendor that focuses on solutions for small to medium-sized businesses, Merkl IT is now offering cloud computing for its customers with help from Sun.

When Merkl IT GmbH was founded in March 2007, as a startup company, it was a traditional systems vendor offering IT services, hardware, software, and support. Despite the fact that a challenging project fell through following a year’s worth of development, Merkl IT decided to continue to pursue the idea for its cloud computing solution, and subsequently the company’s core product, Virtual BackOffice—a virtual IT architecture—was born.

" The Sun infrastructure allows us to operate the cloud-computing solution in an energy-efficient and stable manner, saving our customers money and helping the environment. "

— Julian Merkl, Cofounder and Managing Director, Merkl IT

As it moved ahead with Virtual BackOffice, Merkl IT needed hardware that would help it provide high resiliency and scalability and fast response times for its customers. Although it considered other products, the company chose to rely on several Sun products for its solution.

In the critical area of storage, it uses Sun StorageTek 2510 arrays with redundant iSCSI RAID controllers and 1 Gb/sec throughput to provide a stable foundation for storing all data. The SMI-S-compliant Sun StorageTek Common Array Manager software simplifies 2510 array storage management, enabling Merkl IT to accelerate deployment, simplify its environment, and improve utilization.

It chose Sun Blade 6000 servers with energy-saving features to virtualize and host Windows servers and desktops running Virtual BackOffice. Julian Merkl, who founded Merkl IT with his brother Maximilian, notes that where only a few years ago data transmission volumes and bandwidth were the critical concerns for datacenters, “The question now is how many kilowatt hours are being used, and how much waste heat is produced. With efficient technology from Sun, we can make considerable savings in this area, which really benefits our customers too.” So Sun’s “green IT” focus made it the top choice.

Another factor for choosing Sun was investment protection. "By using Sun Blade servers, we do not have to invest in completely new equipment for our data center every three years," explains Julian Merkl. "It was really important for us to know that we would be able to purchase more blades and accessories in the same design as we have now." Merkl IT also champions the stability of the Sun Blade server and the excellent upgrade capacity of the main memory. Resource-devouring virtualization is also very demanding, but this is not a problem for Sun hardware. "We were surprised at how resilient the Sun Blade servers are," says Merkl. "And in terms of equipment with working memory, we have still not reached the limit."

The company also provides its customers with Sun Ray Thin Clients and associated software including Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Sun Secure Global Desktop software, and installs them on request, which is one of the things that makes Merkl IT stand out from companies offering purely hosting services. "This means we're actually one step ahead of the major providers," says Merkl. Also, unlike its competitors, the company can integrate its customers’ local servers and network infrastructure into Virtual BackOffice.

Both Merkl IT and its customers achieve several benefits from a Virtual BackOffice solution with Sun components. Customers get an affordable, scalable cloud-computing solution with high flexibility. Their employees can access their applications quickly and easily wherever they are. With virtualization, any changes can usually be made without having to exchange components or devices. In addition, Merkl IT customers get remote and local support. What’s more, by moving to the hosted environment, customers typically enjoy significant cost savings beyond increasing service availability. That’s important today, when many medium-sized businesses are struggling to maintain their IT investments. However, by using Sun technology with its Virtual BackOffice, Merkl IT has helped customers overcome that challenge, and the demand is growing. Merkl says, "Despite the economic downturn, we are experiencing excellent growth."