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Business Unit
Consumer Products
American Greetings Corp. – expanding infrastructure and increasing efficiency with IBM Cloud software
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A threefold expansion
of IT infrastructure with improved system management and efficiency
300% reduction
in hardware costs and additional cuts in labor expenses
Business challenge: American Greetings Corp. sought tools to more effectively administer its expanding IT infrastructure while maintaining or reducing costs.
Solution: The company installed IBM Cloud Control Desk and IBM Workload Automation software to manage its systems and consolidate and automate business processes.
99.6% decrease
in server provisioning times, reducing the time required from days to minutes
Client name:
American Greetings Corp.
Case study link:
Quote:
“American Greetings is implementing IBM SmartCloud infrastructure products to help us manage systems better and reduce costs associated with managing that environment.
—Bob Hunt, Enterprise Systems Management Manger,
American Greetings
Company background:
Founded in 1906, American Greetings Corp. creates and manufactures greeting cards and paper and party products. Headquartered in Cleveland, the company’s major greeting-cards lines include Papyrus, Gibson, Recycled Paper Greetings, American Greetings and Carlton Cards. It reported revenue of USD1.695 billion in 2012 and employs approximately 27,500 people.
Solution components:
Software
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
IBM Workload Automation
Business challenge:
American Greetings faced increasing demands on infrastructure with mounting business pressures to reduce costs. The company needed to learn to manage the systems better as they grow while maintaining or in some cases reducing headcount.
Benefits:
With the IBM solution in place, American Greetings was able to automate its provisioning and drastically reduce labor and time-to-value for virtual servers. The solution helped the company reduce the time required to provision a server from 20 hours down to five minutes, a 99.6 percent decrease. With improved system management and efficiency, the American Greetings has grown its IT infrastructure while saving money.
“American Greetings is implementing IBM SmartCloud infrastructure products to help us manage systems better and reduce costs associated with managing that environment.
—Bob Hunt, Enterprise Systems Management Manager,
American Greetings
Solution components
Software
IBM Cloud Control Desk
IBM Workload Automation
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