Oracle Customer Success—Dimension Data

Dimension Data Cuts Operational Expenditures 70% and Backup Times 7x, Grows Business Opportunities with Secure Multi-Tenancy IT Services Platform

The major problems our customers face are the startup capital expenditure costs of hardware infrastructure, and ongoing application licensing costs that are prohibitive to migrating to the latest infrastructure. Oracle SuperCluster was the ideal solution for a secure, multi-tenant deployment platform for multiple lines of business in a managed services model, enabling us to reduce operational expenditures by up to 70%, and extend these efficiencies and cost reductions to customers.

— Ian Lewin, Head of Engineered Solutions, Dimension Data

Dimension Data is a global leader in provisioning and managing specialized IT business and technology infrastructure solutions and services. With operations in more than 58 countries, 23,000 employees, and 6,000 clients, the company provides consulting, professional support, managed procurement and supply chain, and IT outsourcing services worldwide.

Dimension Data requires the most advanced, secure, scalable, and high performance next-generation data center architecture to move customers to cloud computing. All elements of its infrastructure are highly available and secure to provide a stable, yet agile, technology foundation to address dynamic business changes and requirements.

Business Challenge

Reduce costs and improve control by centralizing services provided to customers—from application development platforms to cloud outsourcing services—at a worldwide level
Ensure that the firm’s multi-tenancy solutions are secure at every level to protect client data

Provide cost-effective hosting services to a new market of customers with a unique per- core license model
Revamp existing data center architecture to meet aggressive growth strategy

Reduced operational expenditures (OPEX) by 70% by transforming support and operations thanks to managed services model architected with Oracle SuperCluster, which enables customers to license only the cores needed and cuts number of cores required due to superior speed
Conducted backups 7x faster—in 17 minutes instead of two hours—with Oracle Hybrid Columnar Compression and Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance’s intelligent caching and high-speed 40-gigabit-per-second InfiniBand network

Secured a competitive advantage in the market with the ability to bring customers onto the Oracle SuperCluster environment and cut the number of cores needed by more than 50% —reducing costs commensurately
Accelerated processing of online transactions and analytical operations for the company’s IT services customers by consolidating 20 servers onto a single platform, while halving database server cores and reducing central processing units and license costs
Cut rack units from 160 to 40 and lowered power consumption from 28 kW to 8 kW an hour through server consolidation, reducing data center space requirements, rental costs, and power usage and lowering total cost of ownership
Achieved 10x data compression with Oracle Hybrid Columnar Compression technology and Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance—reducing backup storage size and ensuring system stability
Enabled rapid database duplication without storage capacity expansion or performance degradation through Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance’s snapshot and clone functionality
Used Oracle solutions to create a secure, dynamic services platform for delivering trusted multi-tenant application, database, and infrastructure offerings
Simplified storage management for business-critical credit-services data, thanks to Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance’s DTrace Analytics functionality
Ensured high availability and business continuity with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center and Oracle Solaris Cluster 3, optimizing Oracle SuperCluster performance
Implemented a sophisticated and stable infrastructure to manage an anticipated 4x increase in outsourced business credit services
Provided comprehensive and systematic support services with high system availability and minimized hardware failure
Ensured stability and reliability for business-critical applications that support core business activities

Security at every level and centralized management is essential for our multi-tenancy solutions. Oracle met our requirement to provide a dynamic services platform to securely and reliably host customers for applications-as-a-service, database-as-a-service, and infrastructure-as-a-service offerings. With Oracle SuperCluster, we now have a transformational platform with the isolated security customers expect within their own enterprise, deployed in a cloud model in an Oracle-on-Oracle environment.

— Ian Lewin, Head of Engineered Solutions, Dimension Data