Ayala Corporation

Holding Company Enhances Availability and IT Services, Cuts

Costs with Virtualization
Founded in 1834, Ayala Corporation is a renowned, highly diversified holding company based in the
Philippines. Committed to using advanced technologies to help maximize business investments and
enhance employee productivity, the companys IT staff sought a cost-effective way to streamline IT
management tasks and optimize application and server availability. Using the Windows Server 2008
Datacenter operating system with Hyper-V technology and several Microsoft System Center products,
Ayala consolidated physical servers by more than 60 percent and reduced server rack space
requirements by half. The company can now provision servers in minutes instead of hours, back up all
of its virtual machines, and provide more responsive serviceall while saving at least one hour every
day in IT infrastructure management work and reducing IT costs by millions of pesos.
Situation
Ayala Corporation is headquartered in Makati City and has businesses in a wide range of industries, including
real estate development, banking and financial services, telecommunications, electronics and information
technology, and water infrastructure development and management. Ayala is committed to ensuring that its
business interests maintain the companys tradition of excellence and fulfill its brand promise of pioneering the
future.
Ayala uses advanced technologies to help maximize investments, improve infrastructure reliability, and
enhance productivity. It also helps some of its smaller subsidiaries by providing them with technology resources
that are supported by Ayala IT staff. However, with just six Information and Communications Technology staff
members, it was difficult for Ayala to efficiently manage its computing environment and ensure business
continuity.
Maintaining and managing all of the physical servers needed to support our operations was too costly, too
cumbersome, and time-consuming for our IT staff, says Maria Angelica Rapadas, CIO for Ayala. With a lean
IT organization, and a mandate to maximize availability, we needed a way to streamline our operations, reduce
overall IT costs, and enable a much more resilient, flexible environment. We believed that virtualization
technology would enable us to achieve our goals and establish a more dynamic infrastructure.

Using
Microsoft
virtualization
technology
marks a
milestone for
Ayala. It is a
giant leap into
the
technology of
the future and
a win-win for
our IT staff,

end users, and

businesses.
Maria
Angelica
Rapadas
CIO, Ayala

Solution
In December 2008, Ayala Corporation engaged with First Datacorp, a
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that specializes in helping businesses
architect, develop, and deploy business-critical IT solutions. The goal
was to build a flexible, high-availability infrastructure that would help
Ayala minimize IT-related costs.
The companies began by evaluating VMware ESX and the Windows
Server 2008 operating system with Hyper-V virtualization technology.
They found that the features of the two hypervisors were comparable,
but the prices were not. At the onset of our proof of concept, the
Hyper-V solution cost only one-tenth of VMware, says Franco. Even
after VMware cut its cost to be more competitive, we were still able to
realize a more cost-effective solution with Microsoft by using the
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter edition.
Virtualization is the technology of the future, says Mauricio Franco,
Jr., Systems and Operations Manager for Ayala. With the way it has
structured its licensing, we expect Hyper-V to be the market leader.

Even after
VMware cut
its costs to be
more
competitive,
we were still
able to realize
a more costeffective
solution with
Microsoft by
using the
Windows
Server 2008
Datacenter
edition.
Mauricio
Franco, Jr.
Systems and
Operations
Manager,
Ayala

The solution has been in production since February 2009. Currently, Ayala has 41
Hyper-Vbased virtual machines at its primary site, running on three IBM
BladeCenter HS21 blade servers. Approximately 20 virtual machines run on each of
the first two nodes, with the third node reserved for backup.
Also,as part of its deployment project, Ayala also wanted to upgrade from Microsoft
Office 2003 to Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2007. It used
Microsoft Application Virtualization to ensure a smooth migration. Because Microsoft
Application Virtualization enables different versions of the same application to run
simultaneously on the same computer, employees can have both products on their
computers and use the earlier version until they are ready to move to Office 2007.

Benefits
Ayala cut the number of physical servers at its primary site from 40 to 15a
reduction of more than 60 percentwhile doubling utilization of its host computers
and still leaving ample capacity to accommodate growth. This consolidation also
enabled Ayala to cut its server rack space needs by 50 percent. The company
expects even greater savings in the future. Ayala also now provisions servers in
minutes instead of hours and has strengthened its business continuity program
without spending more money on physical servers.
Franco concludes, Were extremely pleased with our Microsoft virtualization
implementation. We have established an efficient server migration strategy, created
a high-availability environment, and improved responsivenessall while streamlining
IT management tasks, reducing costs, and optimizing our overall infrastructure.

For more information about Microsoft virtualization solutions, go to:www.microsoft.com/virtualization.

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