Co-op Group kicks "server sprawl" into touch

Mutual retailer the Co-operative Group has cut its datacentre maintenance and support costs by deploying HP virtualisation tech and consolidating its "server sprawl".

The Group - whose businesses include food retailing, funeral parlours and financial services - was struggling with a creaking legacy infrastructure consisting of hundreds of servers, each requiring its own maintenance pack and chargers.

The infrastructure was not merely high maintenance, it was unreliable and inflexible to boot. Ian Dyson, director of trading group IS, told silicon.com: "The service levels we were providing to the end users were short of appalling - it just wasn't scalable."

"There was no hope of introducing new technologies over and above what was in place, so that really forced the issue," he continued, adding running and maintenance costs were also increasing at the same time.

The catalyst for the infrastructure refresh came in the form of a mid-2007 merger between the Co-operative Group Manchester and United Co-operatives, coupled with the Group's ambitions for further business growth requiring a scalable architecture.

As a result, the Group embarked on a total infrastructure overhaul, revamping everything from datacentres and desktops to telephony and email.

The Group looked at several vendors to sort out the server side - including IBM - but chose HP in part because of "history" with the company and familiarity with its products.

The new architecture incorporates blades, server virtualisation and SAN (storage area network) technology.

Deployment of the HP Adaptive Infrastructure began at the start of 2008 and is now around three-quarters completed.

As part of the refresh, the Group has consolidated its servers into two main datacentres - building a secondary facility in Rochdale which incorporates water cooling racks and cold aisle containment tech. The consolidation, along with newer, cleaner tech, has enabled it to considerably cut power consumption and costs.

It's not finished greening its datacentres either and is looking for a new location for its primary facility so it can "follow the same standards" as the secondary one.

The overhauled infrastructure has provided greater stability and reliability for the Group, and enabled faster provision of services to end users, Dyson said.

"We've ticked a number of boxes, we've managed to stabilise the overall service, we've introduced a lot of green technology there, reduced overall costs in running these installations and provided scalability at the same time," he added.

The new infrastructure will also allow the Group to integrate Somerfield, which it acquired last year, with "relative ease", according to Dyson.

"The provision of IT services to the business will be relatively straightforward with a refreshed infrastructure - which is something we couldn't have even dreamed of 18 months ago," he concluded.

The server infrastructure refresh is due to be completed at the end of this year. Meanwhile, the Group is also considering further virtualisation - mulling virtual desktops - as well as a move towards IP telephony.