RFCL, a player in the life sciences segment, has deployed HP’s storage solutions and servers to handle growing business challenges and to aid the smooth transitioning of its IT infrastructure.

After separating from Ranbaxy, RFCL has been taking initiatives to make itself a popular brand in the field of life sciences by bringing in new, quality products in pharmaceuticals, life sciences and laboratory solutions.

Ability To Handle Future Growth

In order to make the IT infrastructure capable of handling future growth and collaborate the data centre with other mission-critical applications, RFCL decided to opt for storage solutions. The need was also felt for CRM tracking.

Said Ganesan Ramadurai, senior manager, IS and Business Solutions, RFCL, "In order to scale up our current business and handle upcoming challenges, it was essential to opt for high-end servers and backup devices for our data centre. We had deployed SAP and Microsoft applications at our backend and wanted to integrate these applications with a robust hardware. It was also mandatory for the IT team to meet the requirements of other departments with optimising IT investment."

In its bid to be a global player, RFCL wished to conform to international compliance standards without compromising on quality, which is critical to the life sciences industry. With the increase in the number of mobile forces, it became necessary for the company to keep track of employees, and a free flow of information among them, was also needed. The company decided to move from a DAS environment to a SAN environment with virtualisation technology in place (though it also evaluated an iSCSI solution).

Easy Transitioning With PC Solutions

After deciding on HP, RFCL chose PC Solutions as its implementation partner. Says Ramadurai, "We received good feedback on HP and hence decided to deploy HP storage solutions. We’ve deployed HP Integrity Servers with storage on HP EVA 3000 and HP Ultrium 448 tape drives for backup. We’re also using four HP Proliant Rack Servers for the Exchange Messaging Environment. The transition process was very smooth, with zero downtime."

The total cost of hardware deployment was around Rs 1 crore, and it took two months for deployment. The HP team, along with the PC Solutions team and the facility management team of RFCL, customised the system. The core SAP production environment runs on HP hardware. The EVA technology provides ease of use, virtualisation and an easy manageable environment for the IT team.

The Advantage Of Smooth Integration

As RFCL is in the process of deploying a CRM and an intranet application, it was essential to integrate these applications with the storage hardware and software solutions. Due to the easy integration of HP solutions with application vendors such as SAP and Microsoft, the company faced no problem.
Said Ramadurai, "The portfolio of HP’s solutions, right from the server to the storage, has ensured comfort and ease of execution of other projects. The balanced performance of HP’s Integrity Servers and the scalability and flexibility of the Blade Server has helped us a lot and drastically reduced the job of our IT staff. We’re now able to divert the staff to other projects."

The portfolio of HP solutions is also helping the organisation address risk mitigation and ensure business continuity along with IT security. RFCL is also experiencing enhanced customer satisfaction as a result of the deployment, feels Ramadurai.