Software major Microsoft has said that Lionbridge Technologies, a $461 million U.S. translation, development and testing services company, has saved more than $200,000 last year by deploying Microsoft virtualization and infrastructure software.
Lionbridge services enable global organizations to develop and release products and content in international markets. Companies reportedly rely on Lionbridge outsourcing services to reduce costs and optimize their operations for long-term efficiency. In addition, many of Lionbridge’s customers derive more than half their revenue from international markets with continued growth in emerging economies.
To help meet these customer demands, Lionbridge created and deployed Virtual Cloud Lab, a globally accessible datacenter that is shared by engineers in any of the company’s sites, as well as by the company’s independent network of 25,000 partners who are located in more than 100 countries.
Virtual Cloud Lab is an internal, cloud computing-based datacenter. Lionbridge uses Microsoft’s server and presentation virtualization software, and systems management tools for centralized control of both physical and virtual assets, and directory and remote desktop computing services for more secure access to internal data and resources. The virtualized infrastructure and centralized management enables all workers to access vital internal resources, and the 100 percent virtual footprint has completely removed all physical hardware requirements from branch office sites. Lionbridge has replaced hundreds of servers and desktops with virtual machines hosted in its internal cloud computing datacenter.
Oyvind Kaldestad, vice president of Corporate IT for Lionbridge Technologies, said:“Most of the Lionbridge core infrastructure has been migrated to Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology. Moving our local labs onto Hyper-V and the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager-based cloud platform has saved us time and money. We chose the Microsoft solution versus others in the market because it was the most affordable, met the existing skills of our employees and was enterprise ready. Moving to a virtualized environment enabled us to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2008 alone due to reductions in hardware costs, as well as associated power, cooling and manual labor costs.”
The Virtual Cloud Lab enables Lionbridge to provide more secure, global access via software built into Windows Server 2008 with Terminal Services Gateway with Terminal Services RemoteApp network software. The flexibility allows Lionbridge managers to use experts who are not located in a particular office, and contractors can work more securely from their homes at any time of the day or night. By also deploying FalconStor Network Storage Server software with the failover clustering capabilities built into Windows Server 2008, Lionbridge can use different storage area networks between the primary and disaster recovery site, achieving instantaneous disaster recovery in both physical and virtual server environments.
Zane Adam, senior director of virtualization strategy at Microsoft , said: “With Microsoft virtualization in both the server operating system and in the holistic management tools, we’re able to remove the barriers to enterprisewide virtualization. Customers like Lionbridge receive a cost-effective, easier to deploy, use and manage solution that gives them valuable business agility.”
