SAN JOSE, Calif. – May 26, 2011 –Travelport, a global leader of transaction processing for the travel industry, has selected the selected the Cisco Unified Computing System™ and Cisco Nexus® switches as an infrastructure platform to increase business agility, scalability and efficiency for its primary data center.  The company supports transaction services for more than 160 countries, for over 60,000 travel agencies including online travel services. 

Challenged with rapid growth and a complex data center infrastructure, Travelport selected Cisco® data center technologies to increase data center virtualization and to scale for future growth, while decreasing the time to add and provision servers and reducing the cost for network switches, cabling, servers, and power/cooling.

KEY FACTS / HIGHLIGHTS

• Travelport employs over 3,500 workers and powers travel on a global scale by connecting buyers and sellers of travel in 160 countries.  
• The Travelport Technical Operations (TTO) organization has deployed 1,215 Cisco Unified Computing System blade servers, along with Nexus 7000 Series switches and Nexus 5000 Series switches.  Travelport selected the recently announced Cisco UCS C210 M1 and M2 solutions for 88 rack servers, which have proved to be highly reliable, a key requirement for the deployment.
• With Cisco Unified Computing and Unified Fabric capabilities, Travelport can continue to add data center capacity at a rapid rate without having to add IT staff, and existing staff can focus more on helping key business objectives.  
• Cisco data center technology enables:  

o   Faster Server and Application Deployment:  Using Cisco UCS service profiles, which save and define server requirements and characteristics, Travelport's Hardware Systems Management team installed 190 servers in six hours, and then turned them over to the Global Server Engineering team for full deployment in just three days. This translates to faster application provisioning and enhanced business agility.  In the past, this would have taken many weeks to accomplish.

o   Operational Cost and Efficiency:  Travelport has calculated that the Cisco Unified Computing System solution increases efficiency eight times in cabling and hardware implementation man hour costs, by increasing IT effectiveness  through lower operating costs and resource flexibility and optimization.  In the past, to reassign a server, IT managers had to physically move the server manually connect to the network, and assign new characteristics.  Now, because networking is integrated into the Cisco system, the IT team can repurpose a production Cisco UCS blade by moving it from one UCS pod to another, then assigning a new server identity with a service profile, so the compute resource is quickly up and running.  In addition, Travelport estimates that the Cisco Unified Computing System deployment has resulted in an 86 percent savings in total support hours; a 70 percent savings in total power (kW) and cooling costs; and an 86.5 percent savings in total data center floor space.

o   Data Center Switch Virtualizationto Reduce Costs: The virtual device context feature on the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches, which allows the switches to be virtualized at the device level and appear as a unique device to connected users, enabled Travelport to consolidate multiple switches into just two Nexus 7000 switches for significant hardware savings.

o   Increased Savings through Server Virtualization:  With the Intel® Xeon® processor platform and Cisco Unified Computing System, Travelport can deploy more virtual machines per server core, increasing data center scalability, and delivering cost and time savings to deploy virtual machines versus physical servers. 

• Cisco Services provided Cisco Unified Computing System Implementation Services to help Travelport quickly get up and running. Presidio Networked Solutions, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner, provided implementation services for the Cisco Nexus Series Switches and delivers ongoing support services.

 

SUPPORTING QUOTES

"We are now able to free our teams from the daily management grind to work on the challenges that we know are coming our way," said Gregory G. Sheperd, director, Network Infrastructure and Security for Travelport .  "We will continue to see benefits in network, server, and opex savings year after year, which further enhances IT's efficiency and responsiveness". 

"Although we were successfully meeting customer needs, the infrastructure needed to be much more scalable and resilient to handle the demand expected to occur in the next few years," says Steven Senecal, manager of Global Server Engineering for Travelport.  "For example, the Cisco Unified Computing System service profiles are a benefit to data center IT managers, allowing us to create and store a unique identity for every blade. Our team can query this information for asset management and it enables us to truly rip and replace a blade in minutes if necessary."

SUPPORTING RESOURCES

• View Unified Computing System® website
• View Cisco Nexus® Series switches website
• Read Cisco Data Center Networks blog
• View  YouTube - Cisco UCS at Maryland Peninsula Regional Medical Center (PRMC)  
• ViewYouTube - A fast growing company relies on Cisco UCS to deliver intelligent energy management services
   

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