IBM Helping Brazilian Companies Improve Customer Service in Key Growth Market

RIO DE JANERIO, May 30, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that two fast-growing businesses in Brazil have selected IBM PureSystems and Smarter Storage systems to help them improve customer service by more effectively processing, managing and storing their mounting data volumes.

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Located in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Localiza specializes in renting vehicles throughout South America, offering three service models: individual car rental, rental dealership franchising and fleet rental. Facing exponential growth, Localiza needed to improve service time responses to customers at both its headquarters and stores.

In addition, availability, performance and resilience were needed to strengthen and modernize its IT environment. Working with IBM Business Partner PC Place, IBM implemented a new storage system, which replaced the existing infrastructure. The data then was migrated to the new equipment and replicated to a contingency site with the same technology. Finally, all the previous systems were virtualized in order to take full advantage of pre-existing resources.

Since installation, the project has generated significant benefits to the company's operation.

"The project has greatly reduced our maintenance and management costs, improved utilization of storage areas and system performance, and provided a full and reliable replication of data. As a direct result of this, customer transaction times have been reduced by 30 percent," said Breno Scheid Mascarenhas, Localiza IT infrastructure Manager. "We can complete our payroll services 30 percent faster and we have also seen a significant improvement for customers who can now rent a car faster."

Business continuity was another important benefit for this project. With this new solution, Localiza could remain productive and protected against any financial losses associated with a possible downtime caused by unexpected interruptions. Today, the company has full confidence in the continuity of operations and business in case of disasters.

PureSystems provides uptime in power-challenged region

As a result of strong growth, the Languiru Cooperative needed to build two new data centers to host its expanding IT infrastructure. The cooperative, which serves Brazilian dairy, pig and poultry farmers, grew 25 percent in 2012, thanks to the acquisition of new businesses and diversification of its activities. Languiru Cooperative worked with IBM Business Partner PowerSolutions to deploy IBM PureSystems technology [2] as the backbone for these data centers.

Languiru's goal was to create a high performance, high availability environment that could withstand possible power failures. PureSystems technology met all these needs, delivering the high availability, high processing capacity, server virtualization, simple management, enhanced scalability and security Languiru required.

"This investment represents a milestone for Languiru," said Dirceu Bayer, president of Languiru Cooperative. "All this new technology reinforces our belief that from now on we will have major improvements in the operation and the services we provide to members. Not only is it an investment in IT, but an important project to support our growth and our customers."

The projects were financed by IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing arm of IBM, to help Localiza and Languiru Cooperative lower the total cost of ownership and better manage their IT budgets.  Financing also enables the clients to avoid a large cash payment up-front, and instead, provides them with predictable monthly payments.

PureApplication System helps organizations reduce the cost and complexity of rapidly deploying and managing applications. PureData System is tuned for cloud computing and can consolidate more than 100 databases on a single system. In addition to the common web application patterns supported by PureApplication System, the combination of both PureData and PureApplication Systems can be used for end to end transaction workloads.

For more information on IBM PureSystems visit: www.ibm.com/ibm/puresystems

[1] the Localiza solution implemented by the PC Finds Place includes two storage systems IBM Storwize V7000, four SAN Switches B40 a TS3200 Tape Library, two IBM System x3650 M4 servers and software licenses for Tivoli Storage Manager and business continuity solution.

[2] The Languiru implemented technology in the data center infrastructure includes a Enterpise PowerSystems solution, X240 with 2 blades in each equipment, 2 Power P720 servers running on Oracle RAC, 2 SAN switches 24B, and two storage systems IBM Storwize V7000.

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Contact:
Christopher Rubsamen
(914) 319-8156
[email protected]

SOURCE IBM