Leão Alimentos e Bebidas is enabling growth-driving digital services with an ultra-reliable, efficient and scalable hyperconverged infrastructure powered by Nutanix software and Lenovo ThinkAgile HX5520 Appliances.
Formed in 2007 by Coca-Cola Brazil and its regional manufacturers, Leão Alimentos e Bebidas manages the end-to-end manufacturing and distribution process for Coca-Cola’s portfolio of still drinks, teas and energy drinks in Brazil.
With brands including Del Valle Mais, Del Valle Água de Côco, Del Valle 100% Suco, Chá Leão, Matte Leão, Powerade, Leão Senses and Chimarrão Pampas, the company Leão Alimentos e Bebidas employs more than 1,500 people and operates facilities in four cities across the country.
Challenge
Each year, Leão Alimentos e Bebidas produces refreshing drinks for millions of consumers across Brazil, and the company has ambitious plans to grow its business. To achieve this goal while maintaining top-quality production and on-time customer deliveries, the company relies on its Oracle Database solutions, which help Leão Alimentos e Bebidas manage its complex supply chain from end-to-end.
In the past, Leão Alimentos e Bebidas used a traditional three-tier IT infrastructure to host its mission-critical business systems, comprising around 200 physical and virtual servers from multiple different vendors. As well as driving up the cost and complexity of
management and maintenance, the previous platform consumed four racks – almost all the space available in the Leão Alimentos e Bebidas data center.
Wilson Lunardini, CTO at Leão Alimentos e Bebidas, knew that executing the long-term growth strategy would depend on new data-driven services. To deliver the performance, scalability and reliability to help build future-facing capabilities for the business, Leão Alimentos e Bebidas decided to look for a new IT platform.
The aim was to consolidate the heterogeneous environment into a compact and efficient solution from a single vendor-creating the headroom for growth while simplifying on-going support and management processes.
“By working together with our trusted technology partner RCZ, we determined that a hyperconverged infrastructure would be the most cost-effective way to meet our operational and technical requirements. Of all the vendors we considered, we were by far the most impressed with the hyperconverged solution from Lenovo and Nutanix,” said Lunardini.
Selection
After evaluating hyperconverged infrastructure solutions from a number of leading vendors, Leão Alimentos e Bebidas selected Lenovo ThinkAgileHX5520 Appliances. By orchestrating and managing its compute and storage resources as a single virtual pool, the company can dramatically reduce the time, cost and effort associated with maintaining and scaling its IT environment.
The Lenovo and Nutanix solution offers greater compute performance and higher storage capacity in less than half the physical footprint of the previous three-tier infrastructure. By consolidating from four racks to just half a rack, the company significantly reduces power and cooling costs while freeing up data center space for future expansion.
“We are extremely pleased with the robustness of the Lenovo ThinkAgile solutions. They’re the most stable and reliable of all the x86 solutions we considered,” said Lunardini.
“Using the Lenovo and Nutanix solution, we can manage our entire IT environment through a single pane of glass. This greatly simplifies the process and empowers our IT team to focus on value-added activities.”
Seamless deployment
Working in partnership with experts from Lenovo and RCZ, Leão Alimentos e Bebidas migrated its mission-critical Oracle systems to the new hyperconverged infrastructure with zero disruption to its day-to-day business operations.
“Even just one minute of unplanned downtime in our Oracle systems can cause up to 18 minutes of downtime for our manufacturing plants, driving significant costs for the business,” explained Lunardini.
“The close collaboration between Lenovo and RCZ throughout the migration helped us to complete the move to our new hyperconverged infrastructure in a single weekend, without any interruptions to the business.
“Thanks to the high compute density of Lenovo ThinkAgile HX5520 Appliances, Leão Alimentos e Bebidas has achieved a significant reduction in its data center footprint while boosting its energy efficiency.”
Results
By consolidating its IT infrastructure to a future-ready hyperconverged platform from Lenovo and Nutanix, Leão Alimentos e Bebidas has created a stable foundation for business growth.
Today, the company is free to add new data-driven services to help support its expansion, secure in the knowledge that there will be no impact on the performance of its vital Oracle business systems. In fact, the company can now spin up new virtual machines in just 10 minutes – over 60% faster than before.
With Lenovo Premier Support, Leão Alimentos e Bebidas also gains the peace of mind that expert advice and services are only a phone call away. In the unlikely event of a technical issue, the company has the guarantee of repairs by the next business day-mitigating the business risk of unplanned downtime.
The project has shrunk data center footprint from four racks to just half a rack, a reduction of over 85%. It also cuts power and cooling requirements, minimizing the company’s carbon footprint and empowering Leão Alimentos e Bebidas to launch new digital services to support its business growth goals.
Leonel Oliveira, General Manager, Nutanix Brazil, said: “Leão Alimentos e Bebidas sees that hyperconverged technology is a powerful way to optimize its infrastructure and simplify its IT management. It’s hugely satisfying that Nutanix is part of the Digital Transformation initiative at Leão Alimentos e Bebidas.”
About Leão Alimentos e Bebidas
Formed by Coca-Cola Brazil and its regional manufacturers, Leão Alimentos e Bebidas is responsible for managing the entire production chain of the national line of still drinks, teas and energy drinks in the Coca-Cola Brazil portfolio.
The company operates in the segments of nectars, juices, mixed drinks, sports drinks, dry and ready-to-drink teas, which integrate products from the brands Del Valle Mais, Del Valle Coconut Water, Del Valle 100% Juice, Del Valle for McDonald’s, Leão Tea, Matte Leão, Powerade, Leão Senses and Chimarrão Pampas.
According to the company, being recognized as a center of excellence in the supply chain is its objective. It also aims to continuously innovate and improve the quality of its products in a sustainable way.
