Case Study: NewPage Corporation achieves near‑100% virtualization and 24:1 capacity savings with HPE SimpliVity

NewPage approaches 100% virtualization with HPE SimpliVity

NewPage, a North American paper manufacturer with $3.1B in 2013 revenue, ran 350 VMs supporting ERP, data warehousing, SAP and manufacturing control but was constrained by aging, costly SANs and siloed servers. Although 95% virtualized, the IT team of ten faced high refresh and support costs (end‑of‑life DMX4, EVAs, VNX), large physical workloads that wouldn’t fit on VMware, growing management overhead across 166 RU, and the need to improve backup, disaster recovery and scalability while reducing costs.

NewPage deployed HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure to virtualize nearly 100% of workloads (including a 3.4TB SQL warehouse and Honeywell OptiVision), consolidate management in VMware, and replace legacy SANs. Results included 24:1 capacity savings, 628 TB of IO/capacity reduction, a 25% performance gain, 92% shorter cycle times, rapid value realization (within a week), reduced rack footprint (166 RU to 12 RU), stronger DR/backup between two sites, and a payback horizon measured in months to a couple of years.

NewPage Corporation

Rick Gay

Infrastructure Architect