SCIENCE

IBM has announced that Russian pharmaceutical distributor PROTEK has switched to IBM POWER7 systems for its data processing center. The new systems from IBM replace the previous servers from HP, enabling PROTEK to improve the performance of critical business applications while reducing power consumption and increasing return on investment.

PROTEK is one of Russia's largest pharmaceutical companies, distributing medicines to 44,000 pharmacies and health-care institutions across the Russian Federation. PROTEK's rapid business growth and the implementation of a new ERP system across all of its offices resulted in a sharp increase in workload for the company's IT infrastructure. PROTEK's legacy IT system, based on HP SuperDome servers, failed to meet its growing performance requirements. In an effort to avoid further delays in critical business data processing, PROTEK's management board decided to switch to a new server platform.

IBM and HP both participated in the tender for PROTEK's new IT infrastructure. Performance and energy consumption were among the top factors in the selection process at the end of which PROTEK chose IBM's POWER7 systems.

"The main task of our new hardware platform is to ensure the high performance of our key business applications enabling us to run our business effectively and protect our investments," explained Victor Gorbunov, PROTEK's Deputy CEO. "IBM's Power Systems provide the performance we need at the right price to support our future business growth."

PROTEK is now using IBM Power 780 and Power 770 systems, which were implemented by a team of PROTEK and IBM experts and supported by IBM's business partner Croc. Implementation was completed in September of 2010. As part of the project, PROTEK signed an expanded service contract with IBM that guarantees 24/7 technical support for the new systems.

In the first three quarters of 2010, IBM concluded nearly 800 competitive migrations to IBM Power Systems. Over the past four years, nearly 3,000 companies have switched from the competition to IBM Power Systems.

"Companies are turning to IBM's Power Systems not only to improve efficiencies, cut costs and better manage their operations, but also to run advanced analytics to gain insight into business trends and improve their competitive position," said Andrey Filatov, STG Leader, IBM Russia/CIS. "IBM's customers benefit from innovative technologies, long-term investments and a stable roadmap."

IBM Power Systems are designed to manage the most demanding emerging applications. They incorporate a number of industry-unique technologies for the specialized demands of new applications and services that rely on processing an enormous number of concurrent transactions and data while analyzing that information in real time. In addition, the new systems enable clients to manage current applications and services at less cost with technology breakthroughs in virtualization, energy savings, more cost-efficient use of memory, and better price performance.