Zumiez Maximizes Power Efficiency With IBM

Zumiez Maximizes Power Efficiency With IBM

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that Zumiez Inc. (NASDAQ: ZUMZ) — a leading specialty action sports retailer — reduced the amount of electricity it uses in the datacenter by 15 percent by implementing an IBM BladeCenter solution. Zumiez currently operates some 236 in-mall stores — growing from 174 this time last year. The company opened a new datacenter facility 18 months ago, but due to the rapid growth of the company, electrical usage quickly doubled from the addition of servers, storage, and networking equipment. Zumiez no longer had enough power to implement the additional servers it needed to keep up with its business. In addition, Zumiez was beginning to hit the limitations of its datacenter and power and cooling problems threatened to limit its growth.

The retailer was faced with a decision — it could replace the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) device it bought just 18 months ago and buy a series of racks to support additional 1 and 2U servers, or choose a new solution better equipped to handle growth and utilize the company’s recent investment in a Storage Area Network (SAN). Recognizing that the company would only continue to grow, Zumiez decided to adopt a flexible system to address its power concerns now and in the future and selected IBM BladeCenter.

“We looked at HP and IBM. We ultimately went with the IBM blades because they consumed less power and generated less heat than HP blades and were, overall, a more energy efficient choice,” said Lee Hudson, Technology Director for Zumiez. “We’d never had any IBM technology before, but because of the business advantages BladeCenter has provided Zumiez, we’re planning that 100 percent of our server investment moving forward will be with IBM.”

Read the complete Press Release