IBM Servers Power "Media Capital of the World"

ARMONK, NY & BURBANK, CA.- The City of Burbank migrated to new IBM (NYSE: IBM) BladeCenter servers, improving data center performance by 30 percent and, as a result, reduced IT costs dramatically.

IBM BladeCenter hardware powers applications that manage all of the city’s financial operations; individual and business permits and licenses. IBM BladeCenter also runs a Geographical Information System (GIS) which is used by employees to attain access to local maps, city property and other data quickly, saving time and money. The city also runs a Public Safety Suite application used by Burbank Police Department on BladeCenter.

The city known as the “Media Capital of the World” faced critical hardware limitations with a complex system infrastructure that included a variety of companies, including Sun, HP and IBM. Burbank chose to standardize on IBM over the other major vendors because of success with IBM hardware and customer service. The city chose IBM BladeCenter specifically to deliver the hardware scalability it needed for a major software upgrade, while offering the flexibility to support multiple operating systems.

“We can run all of our applications on IBM BladeCenter and we are spending about half of what we used to spend on hardware. At the same time the overall performance has improved,” said Mahesh Saraswat, lead database administrator for the City of Burbank. “Migrating to IBM BladeCenter has also increased employee productivity since our small staff spends less time monitoring and maintaining multiple system environments.”

Consolidating five server racks down to two racks has provided the City of Burbank with a number of benefits, highlighted by a savings from reduced power, cooling, hardware and licensing costs; and reduced cabling and space requirements.

The consolidation began at the City of Burbank three years ago with help from IBM Business Partner Sirius Computer Solutions. The City of Burbank consolidated its UNIX and Microsoft Windows-based servers onto two IBM BladeCenter systems, each with 10 blade servers. Now, the entire Oracle ERP solution -- the application and the database -- is running on IBM BladeCenter. The new server platform runs a mixture of Red Hat Linux, IBM AIX, and Microsoft Windows operating systems. In the future, Burbank is also exploring a virtualization solution on their highly scalable IBM BladeCenter servers that would continue to add computing power to support their new software applications and growth.

About the City of Burbank

Burbank, named in the Top 5 Most Business Friendly Cities in L.A. by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, is known for its entertainment, business and growth. Burbank’s legacy as the “Media Capital of the World” is supported through the location of many of the world’s largest media companies -- The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros., NBC’s West Coast Headquarters, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and ABC -- to name a few. For more information about the City of Burbank, visit www.ci.burbank.ca.us

For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com