CLP Power Hong Kong, a provider of electricity power generation, distribution, and retail services to 2.2 million customers in Hong Kong, had several problems when it has tried to update its software, provided by SAP, and hardware, and improve its speed in delivering customer-focused marketing campaigns, according to Information Week. It seems that the sole answer at that certain moment was to adopt an x86-based, 64-bit server platform.


The problems started three years ago, when CLP realized that the 32-bit processors had memory addressability limited to 3 gigabytes, insufficient for numerous SAP applications. On the other hand, the 64-bit processors enabled, theoretically, unlimited memory addressability. But another issue had emerged… if CLP decided to be a Windows-based company, there was little to do.

"We began having problems with our SAP system where we had programs terminating because they were out of memory do to the limitations of traditional 32-bit server platforms," says Andre Blumberg, technology and architecture manager for CLP.

The first option was Intel's latest architecture - the 64-bit Itanium which is very expensive actually, but delivers very good results as CLP concluded after several tests.

CLP turned than to AMD's dual-core 64-bit Opteron processors, and migrated, consequently, from 8-way servers based on single-core processors, requiring eight software licenses to 4-way dual-core Opteron servers with eight processor cores, but only four sockets. This final solution also enabled a significant cost cut, as the company had to purchase half of the previous software licenses.

CLP's representatives added that the 64-bit and dual-core based servers from HP also let the company strengthen its infrastructure, enabling the implementation of its SAP software on nine servers, instead of 16 32-bit, single-core Xeon servers.