Many IT departments today are constrained by legacy infrastructure and outdated systems. With its software-defined data center (SDDC) technology, VMware, a leading virtualization and cloud infrastructure provider, is helping free IT from this historical burden. SDDCs allow CIOs to shift to an IT-as-a-Service mode of operation, transforming IT from a reactive role to a strategic player within the enterprise and substantially reducing capital expenditures and operating costs.
Columbia Sportswear, a global apparel company, has embraced this evolution in IT. “With our SDDC running on VMware technologies, it’s allowed us to change the way IT interacts with the business,” said Michael Leeper, the director of Global Technology at the 75-year-old company.
“We’re not bound by hardware any longer,” Leeper explained. “The way we used to do things, it might have taken us twelve weeks to deliver infrastructure. Today, it’s measured in hours.”
Since the company’s IT team is no longer spending time on mundane tasks like racking and sacking and configuring low-level architecture, it is able to focus on adding value to the business. According to a study by VMware, an IT-as-a-Service strategy leads to an average drop of 27 percent in overall IT costs, a 50 percent drop in maintenance requirements and new revenue gains of 20 percent or more.
“I can sit down with my business executives and start trying to understand where they want to go as a company,” said Leeper. “With the VMware architecture that we built, we enabled the business to move as fast as it wants to.”
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