Vialis uses virtualization to keep traffic information flowing

“Server virtualization enables us to give our customers more reliable and more flexible services and brings us the benefit of greater economy in the area of IT operation.” – Johan van der Velde, IT Manager, Vialis Traffic

To switch from a rigid software architecture – every software instance of the main Vialis traffic application required its own server, which meant the infrastructure kept growing, but the servers were running significantly under capacity.
To increase flexibility and reliability – the performance required of the IT infrastructure in terms of availability and flexibility has to be capable of ongoing improvement to keep up with customer demand for current traffic information To separate test, acceptance and production environments -the environments were running on the same systems, which made it impossible to guarantee compliance with higher service level agreements.

The solution

Vialis has up-to-the minute traffic information on the roads and highways of the Netherlands. The company is an innovative information broker that enables radio stations to supply drivers with the latest reports on traffic and road conditions around the clock. To make this service even more reliable and at the same time acquire the scalability needed to bring new services on line without delay, Vialis decided to launch a future-driven IT project. Together with Fujitsu Siemens Computers, the company virtualized the server infrastructure for its central application. Despite the rigid architecture of the core application, consolidation of the legacy environment with PRIMERGY Blade Servers and VMware enabled Vialis to achieve high-availability, flexible operation and greater economy than ever before through optimal use of resources and automation.

The project

The company's core traffic application permits automated round-the-clock collection of data on all of the country's streets and roads. The information is then made available to website hosts and operators of RDS systems of radio stations. The data are also used to operate electronic traffic control systems and carry out traffic analyses. Since the application is not multi-client-capable, the company's server infrastructure kept growing as the demand of its traffic information increased. In addition, the same systems were being used for test, acceptance and production, which meant the availability of business-critical applications was compromised. Vialis decided to undertake a basic change to eliminate these problems. And that meant server virtualization. After analysis of the initial solutions proposed by leading IT manufacturers, Vialis decided to work with Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "What we liked was the professional way Fujitsu Siemens Computers approached the project. They quickly realized we wanted a solution that offered high availability and flexibility tailored precisely to our business model," says Vialis IT Manager Johan van der Velde. The use of VMware ESX Server with the PRIMERGY BX600 Advanced Blade EcoSystem and server blades with Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processors proved to be the ideal solution. The factors that spoke in favor of this combination were in particular the BX600 Ecosystem concept for efficient, business-critical operation, the mature resource management and high-availability functionality of VMware ESX Server and close collaboration between the two vendors. That means Fujitsu Siemens Computers can guarantee that current developments in VMware technology are already flowing into its own product design. Break-even analysis also showed that the BX600 EcoSystem starts to become superior to rack-optimized systems with as few as three blades per chassis. Another benefit for Vialis was that Fujitsu Siemens Computers guaranteed integration of the solution into the existing storage infrastructure and did everything necessary to obtain high-availability performance to meet requirements of the customers' business-critical environment with an FibreCAT storage system.

A record of success

Server virtualization with Fujitsu Siemens Computers helped Vialis achieve its IT objectives quickly and reliably. The company's business-critical application is today operating on a high-availability basis and is not even interrupted for maintenance. Performance can now be flexibly scaled to make new services available with very little lead time. Plus savings in terms of space requirements and energy consumption combine with automation to permit even more economical operation. "Server virtualization with Fujitsu Siemens Computers was a good decision. We now offer our customers not only higher availability, but can also deliver new services faster than before and meet the specific needs of new customers in the short term, " is how Vialis' Van der Velde sees the bottom line.