Case Study Data Center Modernization Pi DATACENTERS

As an enterprise-class cloud service provider, Pi DATACENTERS wanted to offer its clients a transparent, cost-effective and technically superior

experience. By selecting SUSE® OpenStack Cloud, the company gained a cost-effective and open solution, backed by enterprise support from SUSE. With its “@PiCloud™” platform powered by SUSE OpenStack Cloud in place, Pi DATACENTERS provides robust, yet optimized, IaaS, PaaS, DRaaS and a host of other cloud-enabled services, allowing its enterprise customers to concentrate on their businesses, not IT. Mr. Sunder Muthevi

Overview Challenge Founded in 2014, Pi DATACENTERS is an As a new business entering the enterprise- enterprise-class cloud service provider, class cloud service provider sector, Pi based out of Amaravati, the capital of the DATACENTERS wanted to provide clients newly reorganized state of Andhra Pra­ with a completely different experience desh, India. As a state-of-the-art, green- from existing operators. Many competing field data center, the company offers a full public clouds lacked a data center in India, spectrum of solutions across Infrastructure and could therefore not provide transpar- Pi DATACENTERS at a Glance as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service ency about where data was physically Pi DATACENTERS is an enterprise-class cloud (PaaS), and Disaster Recovery as a Service located. Pi DATACENTERS knew that it service provider with clients in the government, (DRaaS), along with a host of other cloud- could provide a more personalized, local, retail and IT sectors amongst others. enabled services riding on its “@PiCloud™” and economical service, but needed to platform. Its clientele includes enterprise find the right platform on which to estab- Industry and Location organizations from the IT, retail, healthcare lish its business. Computer Services. Andhra Pradesh, India and manufacturing sectors, and it also Products and Services serves significant clients from the govern­ Sunder Muthevi, Vice President of Products SUSE OpenStack Cloud ment sector. and Strategy at Pi DATACENTERS, said: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server “We wanted a flexible, reliable, cost-ef- fective foundation on which to build our Results “SUSE OpenStack Cloud enables business and stand out from the crowd. + Accelerates time-to-market for cloud services us to offer secure, dedicated Additionally, many companies have strong + Reduces time spent on maintenance and in-house technical teams that develop support clouds—this degree of security solutions themselves. To win business, + Provides a cost-effective platform, with savings is crucial for those in sensitive we knew we needed to offer added value passed on to clients sectors such as government— above and beyond what an internal IT de- but with centralized control to partment could provide, using our scale keep service costs low.” and expertise to make bigger and smarter investments than any single company could do in its own data center. SUNDER MUTHEVI Vice President—Product and Strategy Pi DATACENTERS “What’s more, client requirements are changing all the time, so it was crucial that Server Case Study dm-drogerie markt

we focused on creating an architecture and enhancements we wanted, we chose our team had many years of experience that would be able to support all future to deploy SUSE OpenStack Cloud.” working with SUSE products in previous possibilities.” roles, which encouraged us to move for- The experienced team at Pi DATACENTERS ward with SUSE again.” Pi DATACENTERS’ additional requirements drew on its extensive past experience of included ease of implementation and the cloud implementations when choosing the Pi DATACENTERS was able to get up and ability to provide clouds within clouds—so SUSE solution. running rapidly with SUSE OpenStack that it could also host providers of Software Cloud, with SUSE Support offering guid- as a Service (SaaS) solutions as clients. “I have been involved in implementations ance where required. As well as maximum flexibility and resil- of almost every type of cloud technology,” ience, Pi DATACENTERS wanted to build said Sunder Muthevi. “The specific advan- Sunder Muthevi said, “The SUSE team pro- a cloud platform that would lend itself well tages that moved us in the direction of vided us with high quality documentation to significant automation, so that a rela- SUSE were cost, ease of implementation and prompt remote support whenever is- tively small team could effectively manage and usability, SUSE’s established expertise, sues arose. a large number of hosted private clouds. fast time-to-market, and flexibility to suit Such a capability would also enable it to our customers’ needs.” “We have used SUSE OpenStack Cloud outcompete both internal IT departments to create a 100-percent software-defined data center, and we believe that we are the and other cloud providers on cost, and SUSE OpenStack Cloud delivers en - first such provider in India. The advantage bring enterprise-class IT service provision terprise-ready technology for building for our clients of using a fully software-de- within the financial reach of smaller clients. private clouds, providing automated pools of IT resources that can be orches- fined stack is that it provides exceptional trated to meet different requirements. flexibility. Solution Pi DATACENTERS uses the technology Pi DATACENTERS decided to use Open­ to provide IaaS offerings encompassing “SUSE OpenStack Cloud has given us a Stack, a free, open-source cloud com- compute, storage, networking, firewalls stable platform on which we can provision puting platform. OpenStack is a cloud and load-balancing services, so that it can independent and isolated clouds, enabling operating system that controls large pools create entire virtual data centers for its cli- multiple clients to have their own distinct of compute, storage, and networking re- ents. SUSE OpenStack Cloud is also the cloud environments but all within the same sources, all managed through a single basis for the company’s PaaS offerings, data center fabric. This means that clients dashboard. Offering seamless compat- and for virtual services around backup and can choose to have the security benefits ibility with popular enterprise and open disaster recovery. of running in their own separate physical source technologies, OpenStack is ideally landscape but still within our flexible, low- suited to running multi-tenant clouds with “Another key reason for choosing SUSE cost cloud—it’s the best of both worlds. diverse workloads. OpenStack Cloud was its inclusion of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server,” said Sunder “We offer our enterprise clients a full spec- “OpenStack is the ideal solution for a cloud Muthevi. “It’s a world-class, open source trum of services across IaaS and PaaS. And service provider, bringing all of the major server operating system offering high we’re continuing to expand into new ser- functionality we need into a single stack,” availability and powerful management vices such as DRaaS. Building new service said Sunder Muthevi. “However, while its tools, making it ideal for a cloud services offerings by orchestrating components open-source status provides advantages provider. Equally, the SUSE version of and services in SUSE OpenStack Cloud in terms of the cost and the future de - OpenStack remains close to the original makes it quick and easy to meet our cli- velopment path, it also presents certain open release, so while you get the benefits ents’ changing requirements.” challenges to organizations seeking to run of enterprise support and development, commercial services on it. Essentially, we you also don’t go too far from the vanilla Results wanted all the benefits of OpenStack but solution. The integration with Crowbar is Pi DATACENTERS has seen a host of ben- packaged and supported by an expert. To also great, which makes it easy for us to efits since implementing its SUSE cloud get the integration and ongoing support build powerful automation scripts. Finally, solution.

2 “SUSE OpenStack Cloud was incredibly as the operating system across all nodes, ensuring that our service has a personal easy to implement and use, enabling us it’s relatively easy to keep all systems touch that is absent from our multina - to go to market very quickly and get our patched to the same level.” tional competitors. For example, as a local new business off to a flying start,” said company we encourage clients to visit the Sunder Muthevi. “What’s more, it has The SUSE technology also makes it easy environments, so they know exactly where proved much more efficient than install- for Pi DATACENTERS to meet all client they’re hosted and what’s going on.” ing and managing OpenStack ourselves. needs by providing independent and iso- With SUSE’s build of OpenStack, we can lated clouds. Based on its experience of client deploy- reduce the time spent on maintenance of ments and view of the full technology the core technology components—so we “These types of cloud form the largest stack, Pi DATACENTERS is able to give can focus on providing the exceptional part of our product portfolio,” said Sunder potential clients detailed models of the customer service that enables us to stand Muthevi. “SUSE OpenStack Cloud enables cost savings they can expect to achieve out from our competitors.” us to offer secure, dedicated clouds—this by moving from in-house to cloud infra- degree of security is crucial for those in structure. These models are highly granu- With SUSE OpenStack Cloud, Pi DATA­ sensitive sectors such as government— lar, and include elements such as power CENTERS­ is typically able to provision a but with centralized control to keep ser- and cooling costs, enabling prospective full private cloud within 24 hours for SMBs vice costs low. clients to clearly see the projected ROI and mid-sized businesses, and within 48 over time. hours for larger enterprise requirements. “We can also host cloud service provid- ers, creating private clouds that they can “Thanks to the centralized control pro- Furthermore, SUSE OpenStack Cloud of- provision for their clients. These private vided by SUSE OpenStack Cloud, we fers a very cost-efficient platform for Pi clouds sit within the same fabric as all have a very clear view of resource con- DATACENTER’s business. our other clouds, with the same central- sumption and we use this to provide ized management on top. This flexibility flexible pricing options to clients,” said T “Purely from a financial angle, it would in providing clouds within clouds has been Lakshminarayana. “We offer full elasticity have been very difficult to deliver a cost- crucial in building our client base.” in network, compute and storage, and cli- effective service to clients with a differ- ents can set up scheduled bursts for peri- ent solution,” said Sunder Muthevi. “The PUTTING CUSTOMERS FIRST ods where they know they are going to be cost-savings we make from reduced main- Today, with the SUSE OpenStack Cloud so- busy, and they can also take advantage of tenance requirements are passed on to lution in place, Pi DATACENTERS can pro- unscheduled bursts to meet unexpected clients in the form of lower service fees, vide clients across the government, retail peaks in demand. Either way, they can ef- ensuring our competitiveness and helping and IT sectors with superior cloud services. ficiently pay only for what they need or us quickly gain a substantial market share.” use—which is a clear benefit compared to “At the end of the day, it’s all about our the in-house infrastructure model, where A key element in the cost-efficiency of clients,” said T Lakshminarayana, Vice you are forced to invest in spare capacity SUSE OpenStack Cloud is the automa­ President of Operations, Governance and that is largely un-used.” tion and standardization it enables Pi Delivery at Pi DATACENTERS. “By out- DATACENTERS to introduce. T Lakshmi­ ­ sourcing their IT needs to us, they eliminate LOOKING TO THE FUTURE narayana said: “In environments where we the stress of deploying, owning, managing, Building on the success so far of its SUSE have hundreds and hundreds of nodes, maintaining and upgrading their own in- solution, Pi DATACENTERS is looking at we can’t afford to spend time securing frastructure—we take care of everything further ways to leverage SUSE OpenStack every component separately. With SUSE so they can focus on their core missions. Cloud. OpenStack Cloud, we get seamless auto- discovery of new nodes, and we then use “By harnessing SUSE OpenStack Cloud, T Lakshminarayana said, “Thanks to SUSE Crowbar and other scripting tools to au- we can deliver a service that stands out OpenStack Cloud, we have got our busi- tomatically build the required services to from the crowd. Nothing is hidden in our ness off to a flying start, and look forward pre-defined standards. Equally, by stan- competitive costs, and we offer clients a to offering our superior service to even dardizing on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server high level of customization and flexibility, more clients as we grow.”

www.suse.com 3 “By harnessing SUSE OpenStack Cloud, we can deliver low cost, transparency, flexibility and great customer service.”

T LAKSHMINARAYANA Vice President—Operations, Governance and Delivery Pi DATACENTERS

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