The company also significantly reduced its IT infrastructure

Apr 3, 2012 17:01 GMT  ·  By

Reddy Ice is one of the companies that chose to migrate to a Microsoft Hyper-V Server environment to boost productivity, and it did so successfully.

The company manufactures and distributes 1.8 million tons of ice per year, and managed to increase productivity and network security while reducing IT infrastructure through the adoption of Microsoft’s solution.

In addition, the company moved to a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, which enabled it to reduce licensing costs and launch IT modernization.

Before choosing Microsoft’s environment, the company tried other solutions as well, including Google Mail and VMWare, though things did not work well in the end.

The company then decided to upgrade to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 in a move that was expected to be more cost effective than moving to Google Mail would have been.

Reddy Ice upgraded its Microsoft Select Agreement to an Enterprise Agreement, which resulted in the best possible pricing, and increased flexibility for the deployment of new software.

Additionally, they gave up VMware and replaced it with Microsoft Hyper-V Server virtualization technology in the Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter edition operating system.

“We moved one instance of Exchange Server 2010 to Hyper-V and found that it ran a lot better,” Steven Williams, Reddy Ice IT manager, explains. “It was also easier to diagnose and fix anything that did go wrong.”

In addition to having no more troubles with its operations, the company also reduced the number of its 40 physical servers to 15 and eliminated around 40 hours per week spent before on maintaining, supporting and backing up standalone servers.

The company reduced costs by 8 percent by upgrading the Exchange Server environment and expects savings of 7–10 percent through completing the transition from VMware to Microsoft Hyper-V Server

“With the latest Microsoft software, we’re delivering more business capabilities with fewer IT headcount at reduced cost,” systems administrator Erik Tillisch said.

“We’ve made major progress over the past year, and everyone is excited about the new opportunities that lie ahead as we work to get the most out of our Enterprise Agreement.”