cloud - acxiom case study

8/3/2019 Cloud - Acxiom Case Study

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IBM Smarter Computing

Acxiom Corporation is a recognized leader in marketing services and

technology that enable marketers to successully manage audiences,

personalize consumer experiences and create proftable customer

relationships. The company has amassed a 12.2 petabyte database—oneo the world’s largest Oracle instances—that houses inormation on 500

million customers globally. With this consumer insight, Acxiom is able

to help their customers dramatically improve marketing results by

enabling them to engage the right audiences at the right time with

relevant messages.

“Our customers are some o the largest and most inuential brand

names in the world,” says David Guzmán, senior vice president and

chie inormation ofcer or Acxiom. “With this consumer multi-

dimensional insight, Acxiom helps our customers to flter out the alse

signals o single-dimensional views, leading to higher-perorming

alternatives that maximize customer value at every interaction.”

Operations o this scale require a massive IT inrastructure. To start

with, Acxiom has 23,500 servers running in a 250,000-square-oot data

center in Little Rock, Arkansas. The majority o these servers are used

to provide dedicated environments or many o the company’s 8,700

customers, and as such, they reect the ull range o IT platorms and

technologies. But as the size and complexity o the Acxiom environment

increased, the company realized that they couldn’t accommodate new

growth by simply continuing to add servers. “We knew there had to be

a better way—a smarter way o managing this amount o data and this

amount o processing or our customers. We knew we had to

transorm,” says Guzmán.

Acxiom transormsmarketing services withthe help o IBM

Overview

The needFacing continued growth and an already

massive IT infrastructure, Acxiom needed

to nd a smarter way to grow their

services—without growing the data

center.

The solution

Acxiom created a cloud computing

environment based on the

high-performance IBM® eX5 enterprise

portfolio, deploying new and existing

customer environments on the IBM

System x® 3850 X5 platform.

The beneft

The IBM eX5 solution delivers 5 times the

performance at 15 times less cost, and

has enabled Acxiom to scale services

dramatically without expanding the

footprint of the data center.



2


Transormation you can measure Acxiom ound the power to transorm by creating a cloud computing

environment based on the high-perormance IBM eX5 enterprise

portolio. For the past year, Acxiom has been deploying new customer

environments on the IBM System x3850 X5 platorm, and migrating

existing customer environments as they come up or reresh. Around

100 eX5 servers have been deployed so ar, with some customer

workloads achieving virtualization ratios as high as 35:1.

“The server numbers seem modest, but it’s a testament to the power o

the platorm,” says Guzmán. “Ten eX5 platorms would be replacing

350 servers, and that’s signifcant.”

But Guzmán has captured even more impressive numbers. While

enabling massive consolidation rates, the eX5 platorm has delivered 5

times the perormance o the previous dedicated servers—and at 15

times less cost. In addition to these cost savings, the transormation has

yielded a reduction in power requirements o more than a megawatt.

And the reliability has been stellar, with no production issues since the

solution went live.

Seamless integration, strong security Acxiom’s eX5 implementation is just one part o the company’s

heterogeneous IT inrastructure, operating within the company’s IBM

WebSphere®-based service-oriented architecture. Guzmán says the

eX5 is an integral part o the environment, integrating seamlessly with

the Cisco network, F5 load balancing and frewall, WebSphere

Enterprise Service Bus, data warehouse environments such as IBMInoSphere™ DataStage® and Netezza, a systems management

sotware suite, and a variety o virtualization technologies, including

VMware.

Standardizing on the eX5 or the cloud environment has provided a

welcome reprieve rom the longstanding diversity o the Acxiom data

center—a natural result o meeting the unique needs o thousands o

customers. “We were alling under the weight o the size and scale and

variety o solutions that we have—and the variety o customers that we

support as a service provider,” explains Guzmán. “And when we can take

all that complexity and reduce it down so that we can provide simple,

cost-eective, powerul solutions to our customers, that’s a compellingstory or us.”

Integrated

• Seamlessly integrated a new

high-performance server platform with

existing network, ESB, systemsmanagement, data warehouse, and

virtualization technologies

• Implemented a cloud computing

environment as part of a dynamic and

diverse IT infrastructure and

service-oriented architecture

Automated

• Automated notication to alert systems

administrators to changes or potential

system failures

• Automated node failover to help

improve the availability of multi-node

systems, ensuring high service levels

Secured

• Secured dedicated customer

environments with segmentation,

rewall protection and data encryption

• Implemented memory reliability

features to help maintain data integrity

Transormed• Scaled the environment elegantly,

adding 2,700 new servers without

expanding the data center footprint

• Retained key customers and captured

new business as a result of outstanding

cost/performance, rapid time to

market, and high virtualization ratios



3


The eX5 provides a number o built-in eatures that help Acxiom

deliver high levels o service to their customers. Continuous system

monitoring triggers automated notifcations that alert systems

administrators to changes or potential system ailures. And automatic

node ailover helps improve the availability o multi-node systems.

Protecting the data within those systems is critical. “Securing our data

is job one,” says Guzmán. “That data is our customer’s gold.” Dedicated

customer environments running on the eX5 platorm are clearly

segmented, highly secured, and frewall-protected. Data is encrypted in

transit and at rest. The eX5’s memory reliability eatures also help

maintain data integrity.

The bottom-line benefts Acxiom has already tested the scalability o the environment, adding

2,700 servers in the past year. Prior to the cloud implementation, that would have surely meant expanding the data center—or building a new

one. But with the eX5 solution in place, the new servers were absorbed

without impact. Says Guzmán, “Despite the act that our business is

increasing and we’re deploying more resources with more processing

power, we haven’t had to invest in new data center space. We’re able to

do all that within the same ootprint.”

Not only is the cloud solution enabling powerul scalability, it has also

dramatically improved Acxiom’s time to market, allowing the company

to on-board new customers in a raction o the time. “Each customer

environment is dierent, but as an example, an implementation that

previously would have taken three months would now take three weeks,” says Guzmán. “The act that we’ve been able to get these

platorms in and get them up and running in production very quickly

has made the dierence in our business.”

It’s a dierence that Acxiom has been able to use or competitive

advantage, along with leveraging the platorm’s high perormance and

reliability. “As a service provider, we believe we’ve won new business

and retained key customers as a result o the actors that the IBM eX5

brings to the table,” says Guzmán. “Every time an existing customer

comes up or a reresh, we bid this platorm, and so ar our success rate

has been 100 percent.”

Solution Components:

Sotware

• IBM® WebSphere® ESB• IBM InfoSphere™ DataStage®

Hardware

• IBM System x® 3850 X5



XSC03083-USEN-00

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For more inormation To learn more about smarter computing rom IBM and how we can

help you integrate, automate, protect and transorm your IT, contact

your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit

ibm.com /smartercomputing

For more inormation about Acxiom Corporation, visit

www.acxiom.com

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http://www.ibm.com/smartercomputing


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cloud - acxiom case study

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