Background

In 2010, an investment in a new IT infrastructure was on the agenda, as growing data volumes and partially outdated hardware required increased administrative effort. In addition, administration had to be carried out individually at each site, which had a negative impact on efficiency and flexibility. Fail-safety no longer met the company's requirements.

IT conception

Two basic solution paths were possible: on the one hand, the simple replacement of the hardware and the use of dedicated servers or, alternatively, the establishment of a virtualized and consolidated solution. Furthermore, it had to be clarified whether the Nuremberg site should be connected via a decentralized structure with double hardware structure and double administration or via a centralized structure by means of a terminal service.

SIGMA creates flexible and high available IT infrastructure

SIGMA Chemnitz GmbH was commissioned with the creation of a concept to find out the optimal solution and the best procedure. The goal was to reduce the project risk.
In the course of the analysis, system requirements and the dimensioning of necessary IT components were worked out. This was used to define the course of the project and to break it down into four sub-projects. The analysis considered not only the current state, but also the future growth potential. "The concept that was created gave us the security to complete the project within the predefined framework. We knew beforehand what the result would be and how we could achieve this goal. In this way, we eliminated many project risks in advance", says Andreas Kirsch, the responsible IT manager at wittig ELECTRONIC GmbH.

Conclusion

As a result, the administrative effort was significantly reduced by the central administration of the second site. High availability was achieved by means of the central deployment of the virtual machines. Likewise, an increase in computing performance and optimization of storage utilization was achieved, which in turn had a positive effect on additional available storage space for data backup - especially for disaster recovery scenarios. Finally, the central data repository simplifies the management and backup of business-relevant data. The project result fully met the customer's expectations - thanks to the preceding concept phase.