Featured content from our partner, Lenovo.
Background
HUECK Group is a leading manufacturer for the global construction industry with locations in Europe, the Middle East, and China. The group designs aluminum profile systems for windows, doors, and façade applications. Headquartered in Lüdenscheid, Germany, HUECK Group is owned by the same family as HELLA - one of the world’s top automotive suppliers. HUECK Group is committed to producing sustainable, innovative solutions with a long service life and high recyclability and employs 550 people worldwide.
Thanks to integrated processes with in-house research and development teams, a foundry, an extrusion plant, and a modern warehouse, HUECK Group can deliver cutting-edge components that meet the highest quality and sustainability standards, fast. The company has been awarded the iF Design Award and the German Design Award in recognition of its innovative product designs. HUECK Group has also been awarded Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Silver certification for the efficient use of resources throughout the entire product lifecycle.
With its “HUECK World Life Balance” approach, the company has a bigger vision and is working towards smarter digital technology, improving quality of life in cities, and increasing sustainability across the manufacturing sector in support of a circular economy.
Challenge
In its drive to innovate, HUECK Group recognizes the importance of preparing for future business challenges. To support a wider corporate modernization program, the company looked to increase IT flexibility with additional capacities.
Ulf Tegtmeyer, the company’s CIO, explains: “We wanted to future-proof our IT to boost business agility as we kick off a major innovation and digitization project. Additional performance and new capacities were essential to facilitate our digital transformation.”
As well as supporting the modernization, the company also needed to ensure smooth operations to keep its mission-critical and integrated production lines running, and to maintain on-time delivery of its innovative solutions for global construction projects. “To be successful, we have to preserve our stellar reputation as a reliable supplier,” adds Tegtmeyer. “So naturally, any upgrade should also help to increase customer satisfaction further with even higher levels of service availability.”
Why Lenovo? Outstanding Technology, Simple Administration, and a Strong Partner
HUECK Group evaluated several solution architectures from a number of vendors and system integrators. After careful consideration, HUECK Group judged the Lenovo solution designed by Lenovo Platinum Partner SVA System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH the best match for its requirements.
“Our goal was to reduce complexity in all areas,” says Tegtmeyer. “The solution bundle offered by SVA with all server and storage components from a single vendor simplified procurement, implementation, and maintenance, while providing great value for money and outstanding performance."
Thanks to the proven stability of Lenovo systems for SAP workloads in combination with the in-depth experience of partner SVA, HUECK Group can be sure that it made the right choice. Tegtmeyer comments: “We selected a forward-looking and future-proof solution that offers ample opportunities for additional optimizations of our IT operations. Another thing that impressed us about the Lenovo offering was the easy manageability.”
To help HUECK Group get started quickly, Lenovo offered several training sessions and workshops, including a virtual demo environment at the Executive Briefing Centre in Stuttgart.
Increasing Performance and Resiliency
HUECK Group worked with SVA to deploy four Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 servers, equipped with 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, and two Lenovo ThinkSystem DM5000F Unified All Flash Storage Arrays. The new Lenovo infrastructure powers the company’s central VMware vSphere virtualization cluster, which runs approximately 130 virtual machines, including SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, manufacturing management systems, and a wide range of business applications such as SAP ERP running on Windows Server.
The company used this opportunity to optimize its data center environment and increase resiliency further by aiming for even higher safety and reliability standards. To boost business continuity, HUECK Group implemented the Lenovo solutions across two locations, one in-house data center and one co-location site at a third-party provider, all connected with high-speed fiber links.
“To achieve the high availability we need for our manufacturing and business operations, we set up a MetroCluster using the built-in ONTAP Storage Manager software,” comments Tegtmeyer. “Our critical data is mirrored between the two Lenovo ThinkSystem DM5000F Unified all-flash storage systems using fast, low-latency fiber channel connections to maximize business resiliency.”
“Sizing the new solution was tricky as we are modernizing our business applications. Thanks to the experience and in-depth understanding of our performance and availability requirements, the highly knowledgeable SVA consultants drafted a solution that provides the performance and flexibility we need to perfectly support our digital transformation based on SAP ERP and SAP HANA with tailored Lenovo offerings.” —Ulf Tegtmeyer CIO, HUECK Group
Results
HUECK Group now benefits from high availability with quick disaster recovery in combination with advanced storage features. Using data deduplication, the company boosts storage efficiency.
By choosing Lenovo solutions, the company reduced complexity and simplified system administration with Lenovo XClarity Controller software, increasing IT productivity for the whole team.
The new infrastructure also provides faster response times and low storage latency to ensure the integrated processes run smoothly, helping HUECK Group to keep its customers happy.
Tegtmeyer concludes: “Together with Lenovo and SVA, we have successfully reduced the complexity of our IT and moved to a future-proof solution that enables more optimizations down the line. We are planning to look at new backup solutions or the integration of hybrid cloud storage.”
- Increased flexibility drives digital transformation and business agility
- Advanced data deduplication boosts storage efficiency
- Faster response times support smooth operations
- Future-proof solution enables hybrid cloud architectures
“Lenovo servers and storage have increased our flexibility, facilitating our digital transformation projects and increasing business agility.” —Ulf Tegtmeyer CIO, HUECK Group