Bank Replaces Proprietary UNIX Systems with Egenera's Open, Utility-computing Platform
Marlboro, Mass.—February 7, 2005—Egenera Inc, a global leader in utility computing, today announced that it has received an order for its BladeFrame® systems from Commerzbank North America of New York City. As part of a strategic initiative to adopt open systems, Commerzbank NA has standardized on the Egenera BladeFrame for migrating mission-critical UNIX applications to Linux® and Microsoft® Windows®.
"The business units served by our New York datacenter need IT infrastructure that can respond rapidly to changing market conditions," explained Richard Arenaro, vice president, Information Technology, Commerzbank. "At the same time, the mission-critical applications we support require uncompromised reliability. Through its PAN architecture and unique virtualization capabilities, the Egenera BladeFrame gives us the confidence to move our most important services to an open source, non-proprietary platform and to repurpose resources on-the-fly. Based on the strategic nature of our BladeFrame deployment, we consider Egenera a true business partner and look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship."
"Commerzbank is an acknowledged leader both in global banking and mission-critical computing," noted Bob Dutkowsky, chairman, president and CEO, Egenera. "Their use of our BladeFrame system combines thought leadership and vision with a clear focus on such business imperatives as efficiency, reliability and impeccable service. We are proud to welcome Commerzbank as an Egenera customer."
In choosing a new platform for its mission-critical applications, Commerzbank had several key business and infrastructure requirements:
Open systems architecture: The Egenera BladeFrame's support for Red Hat® Linux, SUSE LINUX and Microsoft Windows was considered an advantage. What's more, all three operating systems can run concurrently on a single BladeFrame while individual Egenera Processing BladeTM resources can run Linux or Windows as required, notably improving server utilization.
Server consolidation: With expensive datacenter space at a premium, Commerzbank sought to reduce server count while simultaneously increasing processing capacity. The firm evaluated blade servers from the world's largest vendors, but found they lacked the reliability to run mission-critical applications and the flexibility to improve utilization. Alternatively, the Egenera BladeFrame combines enterprise-class functionality with significant consolidation. Specifically, at Commerzbank, the Egenera system reduced floor-space requirements by 90 percent while tripling capacity.
Uncompromised reliability: Designed to run mission-critical applications, the Egenera BladeFrame features full redundancy of all system components, both hardware and software, with no single point of failure. This robust underlying architecture has allowed Commerzbank to move from the 1:1 failover scheme deemed necessary with its UNIX platform to a highly cost-effective 1:6 ratio. Disaster recovery of complete Egenera BladeFrame systems across locations will also be achieved with Egenera's unique N+1 approach.
High performance: Commerzbank benchmarks evaluating the Egenera BladeFrame against the incumbent UNIX machine revealed that the Egenera system delivered better performance for mission-critical Oracle database applications.
Utility computing: Just as the firm's SAN had proven the business and economic benefits of utility storage, Egenera's PAN architecture is enabling Commerzbank to easily repurpose processing resources for different applications. For example, the same pool of virtual servers used for transaction processing during the day is allocated to batch processing at night for unprecedented economies of scale. Additionally, running VMware® GSX ServerTM on the Egenera BladeFrame enables resource virtualization at the processor level.
Press Contacts
Nancy Keswani
Egenera, Inc.
508-858-2605
nkeswani@egenera.com
Sarah McAuley
Greenough Communications
617-894-2807
smcauley@greenoughcom.com
Egenera is a global leader in delivering computing solutions that simplify datacenter operations and infrastructure. The Egenera BladeFrame product family simplifies the datacenter with an innovative server architecture specifically designed to reduce complexity and enable IT to respond rapidly to business requirements. Market-leading enterprises around the world trust the Egenera BladeFrame system to run their most important business applications and achieve higher resource utilization, faster application time-to-market, and lower total cost of ownership. Headquartered in Marlboro, Mass., Egenera has offices worldwide. More information is available at www.egenera.com.
With consolidated total assets of about 380 billion euros, Commerzbank, based in Frankfurt am Main and founded in 1870, is one of Germany's-and Europe's-leading private-sector banks. Some 32,000 employees, including 7,000 abroad, serve roughly 7 million customers. Apart from the parent bank, Commerzbank AG, the Group consists of numerous subsidiaries in Germany and around the globe. Commerzbank AG's domestic operations include a national network of over 700 branches. Internationally, the Group's activities are concentrated primarily in Europe. Additional operations are maintained in key markets such as the USA. Commerzbank also has participations in, and cooperations with, a number of institutions worldwide.
Egenera, Egenera stylized logos, BladeFrame and Processing Blade are trademarks or registered trademarks of Egenera, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat Inc. VMware and GSX Server are trademarks (the "Marks") of VMware, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. The information in this document is subject to change without notice.
