User manual IBM IBM SYSTEM Z OVERVIEW

[. . . ] Benefits BCBSM expects to reduce TCO significantly over five years; energy-efficient server platform helps to achieve green computing objectives; virtualization cuts server provisioning times by 99 percent and provides enormous flexibility to meet emerging business objectives; full disaster recovery can be achieved within 90 minutes-- 97 percent faster than before. Minnesota (BCBSM) is the largest health plan in the state, providing health coverage to more than 2 million members. With headquarters in Eagan, MN, and branch offices in Arrowhead and Rochester, BCBSM employs 3, 800 people and operates as a not-for-profit, taxable organization: more than 90 percent of the premiums it receives are paid back out for health care claims. To maintain this high ratio of payouts to premiums and provide the best possible value to its members, BCBSM puts continual downward pressure on its operational costs. In the IT department, this translates into a strategy of doing more with less--choosing the hardware and software that will drive business optimization while reducing acquisition, implementation, support and maintenance costs. [. . . ] When the business requires a new test or development environment, the IT team can deploy a new Linux virtual server within 20 minutes. There is no longer any need to source a new physical server, wait for delivery, then install and configure it--a process which could take six to eight weeks. "Since the move to Linux on System z, we've received some really positive feedback from the business, " comments Ted Mansk. "Users really appreciate the fact that when they need something, we can now get to work on it at once, instead of having to wait weeks for new hardware to arrive. Equally, because the System z platform is so much more reliable than our previous infrastructure, we no longer get any complaints about performance and availability issues. " Availability and disaster recovery In fact, since the new infrastructure went into production, BCBSM has not experienced a single incidence of unplanned downtime or underperformance. Equally, the company's disaster recovery capability has been improved dramatically by the new solution. "With the old distributed architecture, we would have struggled to restore our application servers within 48 hours, " says Ted Mansk. "With all these servers running on System z, we can perform a full disaster recovery at our secondary data center within 90 minutes--an improvement of nearly 97 percent. In addition, the ease of maintenance also contributes to improving availability. " With Linux on IBM System z, BCBSM can achieve near-continuous availability by reducing the need for planned downtime. It is possible to perform nearly all maintenance to the hardware, z/OS and DB2 while all systems are up and running--a feature unparalleled in the industry and a specific design goal of the platform. Realizing the cost savings Finally, BCBSM expects the new infrastructure to deliver cost savings over and above the predicted TCO savings in the initial cost-benefit analysis. "When we performed the initial cost-benefit calculation, we did not factor in the maintenance and support costs, or the cost of power, cooling and server room space, " comments Ted Mansk. "The savings in these areas are likely to be considerable. For example, we only need 1. 5 full-time employees to manage the entire System z Linux environment--which would be unthinkable if they were looking after 140 physical servers. " Solution Components Hardware IBM System z9® EC IBM System z10TM EC Software IBM DB2® IBM z/OS® IBM z/VM® SUSE Linux® Enterprise Server "Equally, in terms of energy efficiency, the System z not only enables cost savings--it also helps us reduce our impact on the environment. We take a lot of pride in being good corporate citizens, so anything we can do to make the organization more sustainable is a major benefit. " Looking to the future In mid-2009, BCBSM migrated its database to DB2 version 9, and upgraded its hardware platform to z10TM Enterprise Class. The new, more powerful z10 quadcore processors should deliver a considerable improvement in performance, helping the organization handle its rising application and database workload without increasing hardware licensing costs. "From every perspective, running applications under Linux on System z makes sense for our organization, " concludes Ted Mansk. "Performance, reliability, disaster recovery, server provisioning and cost efficiency have all seen dramatic improvements--helping BCBSM deliver better service and better value to its members across the state. " For more information Contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner. Visit us at: ibm. com/systems/z © Copyright IBM Corporation 2009 IBM Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U. S. A. Produced in the United States of America March 2009 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm. com and System z are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. [. . . ] Offerings are subject to change, extension or withdrawal without notice. All client examples cited represent how some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Performance data for IBM and non-IBM products and services contained in this document was derived under specific operating and environmental conditions. The actual results obtained by any party implementing such products or services will depend on a large number of factors specific to such party's operating environment and may vary significantly. [. . . ]