Noveon, Inc.
Noveon is a leading global producer of advanced specialty chemicals for a broad range of consumer and industrial applications. Formerly the Performance Materials Segment of The B.F. Goodrich Company, Noveon has some of the industry's most recognized brand names, including Carbopol® polymers, TempRite® PVC and CPVC resins and compounds, Estane® polymers, and Hycar® reactive liquid polymers.
Noveon headquarters are in Cleveland, Ohio, USA with regional centers in Brussels and Hong Kong. Noveon employs more than 2,800 dedicated employees, with annual sales of approximately $1.1 billion being generated from 27 manufacturing locations across the globe, serving more than 7,000 customers with 25 end-use product applications.
When Noveon Project Leader, Kim Lykins, and MAPSYS Account Manager, Elaine Allen, began working together, Noveon was deploying seven (7) IBM AS/400s in three regional data centers (USA, Brussels, and Hong Kong). A Noveon global network was in place. CIO, Todd Nelson, had inherited multiple leases which were not coterminous for the existing AS/400s.
The opportunity for Noveon was to consolidate the seven (7) IBM AS/400s and simultaneously consolidate the multiple leases. IBM Global Services (IGS) was engaged to consult on any changes that might be required to Noveon’s global network. MAPSYS and IBM Global Finance (IGF) put together the cost justification for the consolidation.
The resulting solution was a single IBM iSeries (i830) server running 7 partitions. The global network was found to be able to support the consolidation traffic. All the leases were rolled into one. The benefit to Noveon was a centralizing of technology to the US data center and a first year savings in excess of $300,000. The i830 was installed in Cleveland and the region data centers were migrated to the new partitions over a 6 month period using a team consisting of Noveon staff and MAPSYS Product Specialist Bob Wasmund.
After the weekend cut over of the final regional data center, resulting in an AS/400 730 being shut down in Brussels and the Brussels users being moved to an i830 located in Cleveland, the end user e-mailed a very happy Noveon Project Leader, Kim Lykins the following message: "I thought you were doing something with the system over the weekend!!" The users had detected no change or drop in service level.
Noveon Website: www.noveoninc.com |