Global train manufacturer doubles IT infrastructure with zero downtime while gaining greater sustainability on Platform Equinix.
Founded in Switzerland in 1942, Stadler is a global manufacturer of customised trains, with a workforce of over 13,000 in various production, engineering and service facilities around the world. Its customers include SBB, the Swiss national railway company; Deutsche Bahn, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and FGV, a public railway company in Valencia, Spain.
Stadler consolidated various distributed corporate data centres across Europe into two Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) facilities in Zurich, where it houses all of its IT infrastructure and applications for greater and more reliable performance, scalability, security and sustainability.
Challenge
Stadler needed to make its corporate data centres more resilient in the face of climate issues and unreliable infrastructure. Its distributed local data centre model made it difficult for the company to efficiently share business-critical applications (i.e., SAP, Microsoft Exchange, manufacturing lifecycle processing, scale-out filers, etc.) among global users to quickly expand its production of customised trains.
In addition, Stadler hoped to gain access to a wider ecosystem of network and cloud service providers. It needed interconnection capabilities to connect with those providers quickly and securely, thus increasing flexibility to scale network bandwidth and accelerate its Digital Transformation.
“At Stadler, we are going through a Digital Transformation. The aim of this completely renewed environment is to increase the efficiency of the entire value chain,” said Michael Hutab, Chief Information Officer, Stadler. “Partnering with Equinix has given us a future-proof digital infrastructure platform that we can innovate and expand on.”
Solution
With seven production, five component and more than 70 service locations distributed around Europe and the US, Stadler needed a more reliable and secure data centre IT infrastructure, where it could deliver consolidated and orchestrated access to all its systems and applications for its global users.
Two centrally located Equinix IBX facilities in Zurich gave Stadler the robust data centre infrastructure it required. The IBX data centres were connected for active/active high availability using a high-speed, redundant dark fibre ring.
Stadler leverages a virtualisation cluster to mirror data in real time between the data centres, one of which houses a separate file backup room to guard against any loss of valuable information.
Greater scalability and flexibility for growth
Stadler required greater scalability and flexibility to grow, not only in its IT infrastructure footprint but also in its network connectivity between users, partners and applications, such as its centralised SAP hub.
Equinix gave Stadler the space and power to double its hardware infrastructure and a choice of network providers to quickly scale its bandwidth speed from 1Gbps to 10Gbps. Also, the company leveraged Equinix Smart Hands for round-the-clock, on-site operational support service to scale and supplement its data centre staff as needed.
Future-proof IT infrastructure
Partnering with Equinix gave Stadler a path toward future-proofing its IT infrastructure and rapidly scaling its global digitalisation, as it considers leveraging innovative, cloud-based manufacturing technologies such as AI, IoT and Digital Twins.
Looking forward, Stadler sees Equinix as a way to gain a fast and secure on-ramp to cloud providers (e.g., Microsoft Azure and AWS) via Equinix Fabric software-defined interconnection. The company envisions Equinix providing the same robust data centre infrastructure reliability and security around the world, particularly in regions where Stadler would like to expand, such as in the Americas and APAC.
A sustainable platform
Stadler is conscious of its social responsibility for sustainable mobility and therefore stands for innovative, sustainable and durable trains. At Equinix, it designs, builds and operates its data centres with high energy-efficiency standards and a long-term goal of using 100% clean and renewable energy for its global platform. In 2021, Equinix achieved 95% renewable coverage for its global data centre energy consumption, with over 200 sites covered with 100% renewable energy.
“To effectively deliver customised trains to our expanding global customer base, we required a robust data centre infrastructure with fast connectivity to our applications,” added Georg Friedrichkeit, Head of Data Center & Operations, Stadler. “Equinix gave us a reliable, secure, scalable and sustainable global platform that exponentially increased our resiliency, performance, security and customer satisfaction.”
Benefits
With Equinix, Stadler was able to meet its global reliability, security, scalability and sustainability requirements for its data centre IT infrastructure and connectivity to deliver a higher level of user satisfaction.
Greater resiliency and security
On Platform Equinix, Stadler went from 99.00% to 99.99% average systems uptime with no outages and increased its application and data security.
Increased network performance
Inside Equinix data centres, Stadler had a choice of a greater number of network providers and increased its on-demand bandwidth speed by 10x, allowing its users to access business-critical systems, applications and partners much faster.
Expanded scalability and sustainability
Equinix gave Stadler the room to expand its power capacity by 10x to 200kWh, enabling the company to double its hardware infrastructure and leverage clean and renewable energy.
Faster digital adoption and time to market
Equinix’s global digital infrastructure platform gave Stadler the flexibility to better plan for the future in terms of adopting innovative digital technologies and quickly bringing to market new tailor-made manufacturing services and locations.
Greater user satisfaction
Stadler’s consolidated data centre strategy on Platform Equinix has greatly enhanced the IT experience for its employees, partners and customers, as it can more quickly respond to new business opportunities and effectively deliver its custom train manufacturing services with greater performance, scale and sustainability.
Instant geographic reach
As Stadler expands its presence to new regions, such as North America and APAC, it can quickly deploy digital services without new hardware purchases across a sustainable, global digital infrastructure platform with Equinix.
