Cisco Cisco Nexus 2224TP GE Fabric Extender Merkblatt
Customer Case Study
1 © 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Toyota Tsusho America uses Cisco Data
Center solutions to cut costs, reduce
deployment time, and expand services.
Challenge
Toyota Tsusho America, Inc. (TAI) is a trading and supply-chain specialist that has been
operating in North America since 1961. Over the past five decades, the company has
evolved from a trader with a limited number of commodities to a multibusiness enterprise.
operating in North America since 1961. Over the past five decades, the company has
evolved from a trader with a limited number of commodities to a multibusiness enterprise.
TAI’s footprint includes a 40-location Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based
environment scattered throughout the United States and Canada, each with its own
IT equipment footprint. All of the IT equipment is managed through a data center in
Georgetown, Kentucky. “If each server at our sites and in our data center is dedicated
to a single location or a single task, you end up with an unnecessarily large physical
footprint,” says Chris Jones, IT manager of infrastructure and operations at TAI. “That
results in a lot of operational costs that are familiar to anyone who manages a data
center. There’s power and cooling, of course. And then there’s hardware maintenance,
which goes far beyond third-party warranty repair. You need to maintain and back up a
large number of physical servers at dozens of locations, and inevitably you have highly
trained engineers who end up devoting their time to low-level problems like figuring out
why a video card stopped working. It all becomes inefficient really fast.”
environment scattered throughout the United States and Canada, each with its own
IT equipment footprint. All of the IT equipment is managed through a data center in
Georgetown, Kentucky. “If each server at our sites and in our data center is dedicated
to a single location or a single task, you end up with an unnecessarily large physical
footprint,” says Chris Jones, IT manager of infrastructure and operations at TAI. “That
results in a lot of operational costs that are familiar to anyone who manages a data
center. There’s power and cooling, of course. And then there’s hardware maintenance,
which goes far beyond third-party warranty repair. You need to maintain and back up a
large number of physical servers at dozens of locations, and inevitably you have highly
trained engineers who end up devoting their time to low-level problems like figuring out
why a video card stopped working. It all becomes inefficient really fast.”
Like many organizations, TAI is in the process of moving many of its business applications
to the cloud, maintaining a mixture between public and private cloud environments. For
instance, the company plans to use the public cloud for hosted email while reserving
the private cloud for applications that are better served in house. “The public cloud
option is a great advantage for us in certain instances,” says Jones. “It’s very difficult
and expensive to manage email in-house. But the challenge comes when you need to
disperse that public cloud offering to our 40 remote locations.”
to the cloud, maintaining a mixture between public and private cloud environments. For
instance, the company plans to use the public cloud for hosted email while reserving
the private cloud for applications that are better served in house. “The public cloud
option is a great advantage for us in certain instances,” says Jones. “It’s very difficult
and expensive to manage email in-house. But the challenge comes when you need to
disperse that public cloud offering to our 40 remote locations.”
Supply-Chain Company Achieves Fast ROI
with Virtualization
• Customer Name: Toyota Tsusho
America, Inc.
• Industry: Trading
• Location: North America
• Number of Employees: 3000
• Location: North America
• Number of Employees: 3000
Challenge
• Minimize hardware footprint
• Support combination of public and
• Support combination of public and
private cloud environments
• Simplify management and support
of IT infrastructure
Solution
• Vblock combines Cisco UCS and
Nexus 1000V, storage from EMC,
and server virtualization software
from VMware
• Cisco Virtual Wide Area Application
Services (vWAAS) and Nexus
1000V virtual access switches
• Cisco Unified Communications
Manager (CUCM) offers enterprise-
class voice, video, and mobility
capabilities to end users
Results
• Achieved 240 percent ROI in
approximately one year
• Cut power consumption by 25
percent and maintenance costs by
more than 50 percent
• Reduced server deployment time
from 48 hours to 20 minutes
Executive Summary