VMware, a provider of virtualisation solutions from the desktop to the data centre, has announced that Chitale Dairy, a food and beverage company based in Maharashtra, has used VMware's data centre virtualisation and management platform, VMware Infrastructure, to consolidate its two widely separated data centres into one, while significantly improving application availability and reliability.

Chitale Dairy, which produces about 400,000 litres of milk per day as well as cream, butter and yogurt, faced operational challenges with 10 physical servers spread across two data centres in a town 500 kilometers from the nearest city. In its remote location, the company found it expensive and challenging to source and retain qualified IT support staff while also grappling with server sprawl.

By consolidating its two physical operations into one virtual data centre using VMware Infrastructure, Chitale Dairy reduced server hardware acquisition costs by 50 percent, software acquisition costs by 75 percent, and power consumption to half. VMware also reduced server deployment time from three weeks to three hours and the time to restore a corrupted server from six or seven hours to 10 minutes.

"VMware helped us save costs on physical infrastructure as well as power and valuable space," said Vishvas Chitale, director, Chitale Dairy. "Streamlining our IT has had a direct impact on the agility of our business and VMware has provided that much needed competitive edge. With VMware, we are now able to focus on driving 15 percent annual growth".

"We believe in enabling companies to become operationally efficient and nimble in today's intensely competitive market place," said Ganesh Mahabala, regional sales director, VMware India.  "VMware virtualisation helps organisations save time and money, while lowering IT resource costs. Chitale Dairy has been able to reap the benefits of virtualisation through data centre consolidation."

Companies like Chitale are rapidly adopting virtualisation because of the clear business benefits it provides around lowering the total cost of IT infrastructure while enabling entirely new levels of business agility.  The deployment lays the foundation for a long-term virtualisation strategy designed to expertly serve users whose work depends on continuous on-demand access to mission-critical applications and information.