Nexxar Group Selects IBM Mainframe & Linux to Propel Business Growth

Nexxar Group Selects IBM Mainframe & Linux to Propel Business Growth

Financial services company Nexxar Group, Inc. is consolidating more than 80 x86 servers onto an IBM (NYSE: IBM) System z9 Business Class mainframe running Linux to help drive its strategy of acquiring businesses and winning new private label relationships, the companies announced today. Nexxar Group also expects to save 30% per year in related operating costs as a result of switching to the System z9.

Nexxar Group is an “early stage consolidator,” meaning that its business model involves acquiring and integrating smaller firms. The company is relying on the IBM mainframe’s unmatched virtualization capabilities to quickly create a secure, custom-tailored computing environment for each “private label” relationship that utilizes Nexxar Group ’s money transfer, money order, bill payment and check cashing services. In addition, the mainframe helps enable Nexxar Group’s growth-through-acquisition strategy, which requires that the IT environments of newly acquired companies be integrated quickly and efficiently.

“When we need to add a virtual Linux image on the IBM System z9, it’s as simple as ‘cutting and pasting,’” said Wim De Ridder, Managing Director and CIO, Nexxar Group, Inc. “By contrast, in the x86 world, we would have to add a whole new physical server, plus the software, networking and attendant maintenance. Just as important, since the IBM mainframe was designed from the ground up to be a shared environment, it provides the kind of rock-solid security that we require.”

The IBM mainframe streamlines maintenance substantially. The mainframe reduces 75% of the required headcount to maintain the operating environment in comparison with the x86 systems previously on the floor. On the software side, Nexxar Group has selected IBM’s DB2 database on z/OS and is running its core applications on the Integrated Facility for Linux, a specialty processor that optimizes Linux performance. The System z9 Business Class server’s extremely high level of capacity utilization — which can approach 100 percent — is far superior to the overall utilization of x86 systems, De Ridder added, allowing Nexxar Group to much more efficiently use the server resource it purchases.

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