Case Study: U.S. Army Shared Services Center achieves 300% SAP performance boost and 83% energy savings with Citrix XenServer

The U.S. Army Shared Services Center improves ERP performance with XenServer

The U.S. Army Shared Services Center (SSC), part of ARDEC, needed to improve utilization, efficiency and availability for its large SAP-based ERP estate that supports about 4,700 users. After consolidating legacy applications onto SAP, the SSC faced an aging Oracle/Sun SPARC datacenter footprint and sought a virtualization strategy to reduce costs, increase capacity and boost performance for its ERP systems.

The SSC implemented Citrix XenServer on Intel x64 hardware (running Red Hat), virtualizing 61 SAP systems in 11 weeks without dedicated outside staff. The migration cut 21 SPARC servers to four Dell hosts, raised SAP processing capacity from 45,510 to 147,600 SAPS (~300%), improved response times by roughly 300% (dialogue steps down to ~350 ms), reduced power use by 83% and delivered about $472,000 in annual operational savings, while enhancing security, availability and disaster-preparedness.

U.S. Army Shared Services Center