Challenge

A leading global cloud computing company faced increasing demand for its services across the globe, which strained its data center and colocation capacity. The company needed to ensure that its infrastructure could handle the growing need for computing power and storage while maintaining optimal cooling and availability of servers and racks. The key challenges included:

• Balancing capacity and energy needs for server farms in multiple regions.
• Ensuring proper cooling systems to avoid overheating and downtime.
• Maintaining high availability of servers to meet SLA requirements.
• Scaling globally to meet growing client demands, all while managing operational costs effectively.

To address these issues, the company sought an advanced solution that could optimize capacity planning and reduce the complexity of managing data centers. The company partnered with SCM Innovators to leverage the SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) Supply Planning Optimization engine.

Solution

Leveraging SAP IBP Supply Planning Optimization

Together with SCM Innovators, the cloud computing company implemented SAP IBP’s Supply Planning Optimization engine to streamline its data center planning and improve capacity utilization. SAP IBP enabled the company to model its data centers as complex supply chain networks, balancing energy consumption, cooling needs, and availability against demand.

Key components of the solution included:

1. Capacity Planning for Data Centers:

• SAP IBP was configured to handle real-time data inputs on current server workloads, energy consumption, and cooling capacities. This allowed the company to simulate future demand and adjust infrastructure capacity accordingly.
• The optimization engine helped identify the best location-based allocations for racks and servers based on available capacity and energy efficiency requirements.

2. Cooling and Energy Optimization:

• The solution took into account cooling requirements by factoring in energy needs and climate data from different regions. This allowed the company to ensure that data centers were properly equipped to handle high workloads while maintaining optimal temperatures.
• SAP IBP’s optimization capabilities helped identify energy-efficient ways to distribute workloads across data centers globally, reducing overall power consumption.

3. High Availability and Scalability:

• SAP IBP provided a scalable solution that could handle the rapid growth in demand for the company’s services. The company could simulate multiple scenarios, enabling it to prepare for increased workloads and avoid downtime.
• With real-time insights into server and network availability, the system ensured that enough capacity was always available to meet client SLAs and service demands.

4. Global Capacity Synchronization:

• SAP IBP allowed the company to model its global data center network as a single supply chain, optimizing resources across different locations to ensure high availability for its clients.
• This capability enabled the cloud provider to efficiently allocate server capacity across multiple regions, prioritizing areas with higher demand while maintaining a global view of overall capacity and performance.

Business Outcomes

1. Improved Capacity Utilization:

• With the SAP IBP engine, the company optimized the use of its existing data centers, improving capacity utilization by 20%. This ensured that excess capacity was minimized, and resources were allocated efficiently to meet global demands.

2. Energy and Cooling Efficiency:

• By optimizing cooling needs and managing workloads more efficiently, the company reduced its energy consumption by 15%, lowering operational costs while maintaining high performance for its clients.

3. Reduced Downtime and Improved SLAs:

• The real-time availability and proactive management capabilities of SAP IBP helped the company reduce unplanned downtime by 25%, ensuring higher levels of uptime and reliability for its customers.

4. Scalable Growth:

• The cloud computing company was able to support its clients’ growing demand globally by leveraging SAP IBP to scale its operations in a sustainable and cost-efficient manner, improving its ability to meet future business needs.