Perfetti Savors the Success of VDI

Summary:

It’s expensive, it’s bandwidth intensive, and it meets user resistance. That’s what you, like most of your peer, probably think of VDI.  But the IT head of Perfetti   Van Melle doesn’t agree.

Highlights:

By purchasing thin clients instead of conventional desktops, Perfetti trimmed hardware costs between 40-50 percent or about $ 4 million (about Rs 18 crore). VDI lowered maintenance costs by about 60 percent and saved man hours by 60-70 percent

Reader ROI:

How VDI can save costs on power, cooling and spaceHow VDI can improve agility and scalabilityHow planning plays a key role in getting the VDI project off the ground

/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Basant Kumar Chaturvedi was having a tough day. As Controller IT (Head IT) at the confectionary firm Perfetti Van Melle India, he had spent the entire morning in and out of meetings with management. And he wasn’t getting anywhere.   Over the course of 16 years, Perfetti has added 15 brands to its product basket including Big Babol, Center Fresh, Alpenliebe, Mentos, Happydent, Chlormint and Marbels. According to an AC-Nielsen report, Perfetti has a 25 percent share of the Rs 4,500 crore Indian confectionery market. And the company has been growing steadily at over 20 percent year on year. The candy maker was aggressively scaling up its operations throughout the country. While all that formed a rosy picture, there was a problem: Its IT infrastructure was proving to be a stumbling block in the path of that growth.

Biting Into Growth Spread across geographies, the company’s IT infrastructure wasn’t scalable or flexible. This retarded efficiency and increased costs for the company.  Managing desktops-for over 1,500 users-across geographically dispersed operating units was proving to be a prohibitive proposition. “Apart from compliance issues, data privacy was a major concern. The fact that our users work in three shifts only compounded the situation,” says Chaturvedi. That wasn’t it. Users in remote locations complained of slow response times as SAP screens took time to load. There were several cases of PC downtime resulting from virus attacks. This meant IT staff had to travel to remote locations to solve OS issues and to address application access problems.  The distributed infrastructure was also adding to Perfetti’s hardware and bandwidth costs. The worst and the most critical problem was that business was being denied on-demand IT services to users in new locations. This put decision-making on hold. All these issues were brought up during that morning’s meeting. And business wanted Chaturvedi, a 14-year-old veteran of the company, to fix these problems. As he ruminated on a future course of action, his phone rang and broke his train of thought. The caller bore more bad news. A fire had broken out at one of their sales locations in Jammu. The entire operational set-up had been destroyed. The CNFAs (who perform a host of business activities on behalf of Perfetti like selling, maintaining stocks, consolidating  data for the sales force) had lost all their critical data. Distraught, Chaturvedi hung up and thought, “Why should we make others the custodian of our business critical data?” With a seed of an idea germinating inside him, Chaturvedi rose excitedly from his chair. He knew how to implement a centralized control for all business operations at Perfetti and streamline the company’s infrastructure.

The VDI Candyman At various technology forums, Chaturvedi had heard that desktop virtualization had taken the technology arena by storm. More than one analyst had pointed out that VDI ensures a more optimal utilization of resources, shrinks management costs, and reduces energy consumption. Chaturvedi counted the benefits of desktop virtualization off his fingers. It would bring Perfetti the promise of elasticity, user convenience, and would allow the company to extract the most out of existing computing resources. He knew it was time to embrace the technology. But to cherrypick the solution that best suited his needs Chaturvedi would need to undertake POCs with VMware, Microsoft and Citrix.   One month of evaluation later he found that Citrix XenDesktop4 was the best suited platform to virtualize Perfetti’s desktops. “It worked best in remote environments. It would help us achieve fast transmission of user desktops as it quickly and securely delivers individual applications. It would also make the entire login process simple and secure, allowing access from any connected Web browser for our users,” says Chaturvedi. Enthused by the findings of the POC, Chaturvedi made a presentation before the management in December 2008. He outlined the results of the POC and explained the cost benefits and operational efficiency that Perfetti could attain with VDI. They were quickly convinced. Within three weeks, the first phase of virtualization was rolled out to 100 users whose requirements were not very compute intensive. These users operated out of plants, and warehouses or performed administrative functions at the head office using SAP, MS Office and Excel. Soon, Chaturvedi began to see the benefits of the VDI project. There was no need to install new OS versions, applications and new user profiles for individual PCs or desktops. With VDI, the company was able to package each OS, app and user profile in a single image in its Manesar-based datacenter and dynamically assemble virtual desktops for every user. “This meant that when we needed to apply patches and updates, we could do so just once from our datacenter. This required far less storage space than was previously used to handle the same number of desktops,” Chaturvedi says. When a user logged in from either a thin client or a PC, it generated in real time a base image from the datacenter. “That means if we wanted to roll out additional desktops, we could do so in just a few clicks. Once the user has logged in, the virtual desktop feels like a  local desktop, only with fewer hassles,” says Chaturvedi. The solution, Chaturvedi says, delivered a complete Windows desktop experience as an on-demand service to Perfetti’s users, who were spread across the country. And, if a user got disconnected, nothing was truly lost. The virtual desktop was entirely backed up at the company’s datacenter.

Teething Troubles But midway through the deployment, the pace of the implementation slowed down as performance snags   cropped up. Perfetti ran SAP, an e-mail application, MS Office, and its SharePoint portal on Citrix. Desktop virtualization is network intensive and organizations attempting it should have a minimum of 64 Kbps bandwidth. Perfetti has a 4 Mbps connection on its central site. Plants use up to 1 Mbps, branches utilize 512 Kbps connections, and small locations use 64 Kbps to 128 Kbps. Perfetti did not have many graphic requirements, but as the number of LAN users shot up, application speed became a problem and Chaturvedi’s challenge was to deliver performance without increasing bandwidth consumption. “All the web-based applications such as SharePoint, secondary sales, secondary claims, and the Internet slowed down since there were numerous gateways routed through the security applications deployed on the centralized servers. Added to this was the desktop virtualization program, which was also going through the VPN router-resulting in slower response times,” says Chaturvedi. So, Chaturvedi consulted his technology partner who suggested a Branch Repeater and WANScaler. This would help Perfetti improve bandwidth utilization by almost five times. He took 15 days out to run a POC for it. The test satisfied him: The Branch Repeater increased throughput by three to ten times. It also accelerated application access by 40 percent and boosted download speeds by two to three times at all the company’s locations. Perfetti saved bandwidth resulting in cost savings of $ 1 million (about Rs 4.5 crore).

Savoring Success

The /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Rs 14.8 million project has brought cost savings on multiple fronts. By purchasing thin clients instead of conventional desktops, Perfetti trimmed hardware costs between 40-50 percent. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Savings on Desktop Virtualization itself was Rs 4.8 million. Savings through server virtualization was Rs 7.5 million.

VDI lowered maintenance costs by about 60 percent and saved man hours. “Our IT personnel used to travel to the remote sites to fix IT issues. But with VDI, we have saved man hours by 60-70 percent. Which means, people who were fixing desktop issues can now focus on strategic projects,’ says Chaturvedi. In addition, the VDI project has shrunk the company’s carbon footprint and cut power and cooling costs by Rs 7.5 lakh per annum. “We project a total savings-in capital and operating expenses-to the tune of 40-50 percent per user over a three-year period,” says Sameer Suneja, MD, Perfetti. But perhaps most importantly, VDI has made Perfetti more market responsive. “If business says that ‘from tomorrow I want to operate from a particular site and I need this many number of users,’ I can fulfill that need within 5-10 minutes,” says Chaturvedi. The fact that the company’s IT infrastructure is now flexible and, more importantly, scalable has ensured that IT supports Perfetti’s expanding business. Says Suneja, “The company’s desktop architecture will scale effortlessly to keep pace with its expansion. And that’s because now we have the ability to bring new users on board-from provisioning to their profile configuration-in only five minutes, and deliver a state-of-the-art desktop environment in seconds.  As a result, Perfetti combines rapid growth with a shrinking carbon footprint,” Suneja says. Not someone to rest on his laurels, Chaturvedi is already planning to  use VDI to access business applications from any device-iPhone, Blackberry, etcetera-over the Internet so that users  can work from home. Sweet times for the candy manufacturer.