T-SYSTEMS

Bridging legacy to meet speed
and efficiency demands.
Cloud computing pioneer T-Systems modernised its
infrastructure to bring customers the speed and flexibility they
demand through Lenovo Open Cloud Automation (LOCA).

T-Systems is a pioneer in cloud computing for multinational
corporations and the public sector, with unrivalled service
capabilities and a strong partner ecosystem. It provides
customers with the building blocks they need to successfully
enable digital transformation. Headquartered in Frankfurt,
Germany, the IT consulting and services firm employs 37,500
people globally and is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.
As part of Europe’s leading telecommunications provider,
T-Systems operates a huge private cloud estate with cloud-likeplatforms located across approximately 30 data centresworldwide. This includes hosting 65,000 virtual machines(VMs) on around 10,000 physical servers, which containbusiness-critical applications. A typical customer has around
300 VMs, but some use up to 5,000. Furthermore, thecompany is growing at a rate of up to 8,000 VMs year on year,and subsequently undergoes constant migration.
T-Systems is the world’s largest SAP Hosting Provider, with 5.9
million users using its systems, and runs Europe’s largest cyberdefence and security system. Its 4,800 digital transformation
experts provide consulting, digital solutions and co-innovation.
This forms the bedrock for an integrated portfolio focused onfour key areas: cloud and infrastructure, connectivity,digitalization and security.

Using these as the foundation of its approach, T-Systems helps
businesses to build the right ecosystem for their digitaltransformation requirements. It is therefore critical for thebusiness to provide consistent performance and zero outages
through a standardised, tailored and scalable portfolio.
However, the inflexible nature of T-Systems previous private
cloud offering demanded high operational efforts due todifferent configuration methods. As Thomas Rumpf, CTO
Private Cloud at T-Systems, summarises: “The old way ofworking was too slow, complex and costly. There was a lot of‘dead time’ where the server guys would have to wait on
storage and networking. This resulted in lots of tickets in theinternal system, lots of coordination and the vast majority oftime was waiting time.

“We needed a more prescriptive
approach and a solution toreally separate the control
and data planes.”
The big turning point came when T-Systems realised thatcustomers were increasingly operating multi-cloudenvironments. “Our customers wanted to use services the same
way they used cloud services from AWS, Azure or GCP,” said
Thomas Rumpf. “This meant that our platform wasn’t suited toour customers’ needs and it was too slow to be able to meettheir demands.”

T-Systems needed to save costs and modernise its
infrastructure with an open, end-to-end automated platformthat could host future workloads for customers on- and offpremises while maintaining its legacy environments. It alsoneeded to ensure the customer’s experience of using theprivate cloud was as seamless as the public cloud, could
address scale and complexity, provide speed and agility, andsupport the VMware Cloud Foundation.
To determine the right solution, T-Systems conducted a lengthy
selection process, during which it considered both industry
leaders and emerging start-ups as options to address its
platform requirements. After carefully perusing the industry,the company came to the conclusion that only Lenovo OpenCloud Automation (LOCA) could meet its needs.
Lenovo’s solution offered cloud-scale building blocks, DevOps
support and a collaborative partnership that decreased thetime it took to onboard new customers and provided
automated, error-free rapid deployment and end-to-end
lifecycle management. This included factory-integrated racks
containing ThinkAgile VX and Think System servers andnetworking that comprised around 100 racks, 3,000 servers
and 350 switches. Furthermore, it offered 100% end-to-end
automation through Lenovo Open Cloud Framework andVMware vRealize, containing around 20 workflows and 500
tasks.
Thomas Rumpf recalls: “There was a lot to do to make sure all
the components worked properly together. It required a lot ofeffort to make all the separate components in the architecture
fit together, then configure and test them.”But the effort was well worth it. Lenovo’s solution has
completely changed how T-Systems works. A migration processthat previously took two weeks can now be completed in as
little as four hours.

“Standard use cases are now 100%
automated within the platform
through LOCA” said Thomas
Rumpf. “However we are still able
to customize services via highly
automated blueprints, which leads
to cost efficiency in the range of 30
to 40% for the client.”
The company now only works on an API level; its existing
Lenovo hardware is also wrapped up in an automated API. Its
environment has evolved from three-tier clusters to hyperconverged infrastructure and it operates VMware, which
provides high numbers of Lenovo vSAN nodes in different
flavours and server types. Meanwhile, configuration iscontained in an Ansible playbook that ensures new use cases
are repeatable, are quick to roll-out, and can be easily adapted
to meet evolving customer demands.

Moreover, T-Systems’ operations team now has standardised
templates and configurations in place for all components,including switches and networking. LOCA ensures tasks thatwere previously time-intensive and error-prone are now basedon tried-and-tested setups.
Lenovo’s open cloud automation solution has helped T-Systems
to maintain its IT legacy and make it future-ready. As a nextstep, the firm is looking to implement dual stacks in someenvironments and bare metal integration to pair its huge
existing storage estate with its OpenStack environment under
the LOCA framework.

“It’s a totally different quality inwhat we’re doing. We now havethe option to scale in a way that
we simply didn’t have before.
Efficiency has increased
dramatically and we’re now able
to cope with customer
requirements at a speed that waspreviously impossible. ”– Thomas Rumpf, CTO Private Cloud, T-Systems

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