Featured content from our partner, Lenovo.
Who is EXE.IT?
Based in Castel San Pietro Terme in Bologna, Italy, EXE.IT is an IT services provider that offers virtualized, agile, out-of-the-box solutions. A certified B Corporation, EXE.IT focuses on delivering quality cloud services with sustainable, green computing.
The Challenge
EXE.IT is committed to minimizing the environmental impact of its services and helping its clients embrace sustainable IT. Every element of the business has been engineered to place sustainability front and center, starting from the design of the company’s flagship data center, named 00gate.
The first zero-emissions data center in southern Europe, 00gate runs without hard disks (for greater energy efficiency), recycles rainwater, and generates most of its electricity from solar panel systems. Any extra electricity is obtained exclusively from renewable sources, as certified by the Green Cloud Consortium.
When it came to outfitting this state-of-the-art data center with servers, storage, and networking EXE.IT made it a priority to select hardware that was both powerful and efficient. Since 2018, the company has found that perfect combination in Lenovo.
“We designed every element of the 00gate data center with energy efficiency in mind. We wanted an infrastructure that packed maximum performance into the smallest volume.”—Gianluigi Capra, CEO, EXE.IT
Green IT runs on Lenovo HCI
EXE.IT originally chose to run its cloud services portfolio on the Lenovo ThinkAgile CP platform. After the system was withdrawn by Lenovo, the company decided to pivot to a new platform: the Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Series. EXE.IT opted for ThinkAgile MX Certified Nodes, which combine the SDI HCI capabilities of Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Edition with Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 V2 servers and are powered by Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors.
Today, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution from Lenovo and Microsoft powered by Intel Xeon Scalable processors is the beating heart of EXE.IT’s sustainable cloud services, including green virtual data center, green virtual private server, and IT-as-a-Service solutions.
Hardware
- Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Certified Node powered by Intel Xeon Scalable processors
- Lenovo ThinkSystem DE Series Storage Array
- Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series Storage Array
Services
- Lenovo XClarity Administrator
- Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Edition
Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Series powers a huge variety of hosted workloads, from regular enterprise databases to demanding AI and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments. This solution allows organizations like EXE.IT to leverage virtualized compute and storage, clustering servers across Ethernet networks, with scalable performance and capacity, and the flexibility to support multiple workloads.
To cover additional storage needs, EXE.IT makes use of multiple Lenovo ThinkSystem storage arrays. To manage all its data center resources—infrastructure, virtual machines, software, and hardware—the company harnesses the Lenovo XClarity extension integrated with Windows Admin Center for a unified and simplified management experience.
“Lenovo was instrumental in helping us make a smooth transition to the ThinkAgile MX platform. During the deployment and even today, they have been all-in. The team is always ready to step up to answer our questions, find solutions, and ensure our success.”—Gianluigi Capra, CEO, EXE.IT
Results
Backed by world-class Lenovo infrastructure, EXE.IT has been able to push performance, availability, and scalability to new levels. It’s empowered the company to steadily expand its range of service offerings and reach out to all-new markets.
Choosing HCI also means that EXE.IT has been able to manage this rise in business volumes with relatively low impact. With the Lenovo-Microsoft solution, scaling is as simple as adding a new node, allowing the company to accommodate new client needs with speed and ease.
Ultimately, while all this growth has obviously been good for business, the impact reaches far beyond the financials. As more clients opt for EXE.IT’s green cloud services model, it adds up to more sustainable operations with less environmental impact—a net good for people and the planet.
- Privacy: Offering private cloud services as an alternative to traditional public clouds.
- Performance: Delivering top performance for a wide variety of hosted workloads.
- Sustainability: Opening new markets for greener, more sustainable cloud services.
- Human relationship: Working in close collaboration with the Lenovo team for success.
Why Lenovo?
Lenovo had already proven that its technology could deliver the right balance of performance and efficiency for EXE.IT, which gave the company the confidence to embrace a Lenovo ThinkAgile MX Series HCI solution.
Through this new engagement, EXE.IT has also been able to forge a much closer partnership with Lenovo.
“I’ve worked with enough technology providers to know that success isn’t just about the products you choose—it’s the people you work with to deploy them. We enjoy a genuine human relationship with our team at Lenovo. This is something that’s not always easy to find, and it has made all the difference for us.”—Gianluigi Capra, CEO, EXE.IT
“Although Lenovo is a major multinational company, it still pays close attention to the human element, and that’s extremely valuable for us,” explains Capra. “The relationship between Lenovo and EXE.IT goes well beyond that of client-supplier. Lenovo takes time to understand our problems and always tries to solve them, regardless of their immediate return in terms of profit. That’s something that we find to be incredibly special and admirable.”