Innovating Mission-Critical Data Storage with Cloud Operations Model for the BMW Group

Overview

Challenge

• Deliver fast, reliable, cost-efficient and sustainable data storage as a service to drive production across more than 30 production sites.

Solution

• Implement a global Hitachi EverFlex consumption-based IaaS solution using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform 5600 enterprise storage systems.

Outcome

• Increase cost-efficiency, support sustainability targets and provide high-performance, fully redundant storage for 60PB of mission-critical data.

Challenge

With its four brands BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce and BMW Motorrad, the BMW Group is the world’s leading premium manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles and also provides premium financial services. The BMW Group production network comprises over 30 production sites worldwide; the company has a global sales network in more than 140 countries.

In the automotive industry, designing solutions for the future and focusing on sustainability is becoming increasingly important. To power its highly efficient just-in-time production lines, the BMW Group needs reliable IT solutions with zero downtime and ultra-low latency. Central data storage solutions are essential for all business processes from purchasing to warehouse management, marketing, sales and after-sales services. With its global operations, the automotive manufacturer requires 24/7 availability and high performance to keep the business running smoothly. At the same time, the company takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously and sets sustainability as a top priority in all decisions relating to IT architecture.

Solution

When the BMW Group decided to upgrade its mission-critical block storage systems to take advantage of the latest technology, the company evaluated a number of leading global storage vendors. Reliability, zero downtime operations and scalability were key criteria. The company decided to challenge the market to find a vendor that could offer the fastest, most effective and innovative solutions. Hitachi Vantara offered a comprehensive full-service package with Hitachi EverFlex Managed Services that the BMW Group assessed as offering the best value for its business. This included the nondisruptive migration of thousands of servers and hundreds of terabytes of data to the new systems.

With this new contract, Hitachi Vantara has now been providing block storage services to the BMW Group for an unbroken period for over a decade. Although the company constantly tests the market and is always open to changing vendors, its decision-makers remain convinced by Hitachi’s consistent commitment to going above and beyond with smart infrastructure solutions combined with excellent managed services.

Hitachi Vantara’s reliability was a key factor in the decision. With 18 data center locations, many thousands of virtual servers and 60PB of data powering the business, high availability is extremely important for the BMW Group. Hitachi solutions deliver unique redundancy capabilities even during upgrade and maintenance tasks, which adds confidence and just shows how seriously Hitachi takes its availability guarantee.

EverFlex Managed Services builds on top of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5600 enterprise storage systems with ultra-fast and low-latency data storage, which may soon include NVMe. It provides a consumption-based private storage cloud that the BMW Group uses as the core storage platform for a wide range of virtualized systems using VMware, as well as open-source hypervisors.

The BMW Group’s storage environment has grown over many years and supports many different systems and applications, from SAP applications and database systems to AI and ML workloads, to communication and collaboration solutions. Despite the scale and complexity of its IT architecture, the company has found that the Hitachi Vantara storage works seamlessly and reliably.

Outcome

With Hitachi EverFlex,  the company only pays for the resources it needs and uses. This provides the benefits of very flexible storage and managed services with cloud-like convenience and simplicity, while still maintaining the high performance and low latency of an on-premises hybrid cloud solution.

Most importantly for a global 24/7 business such as the BMW Group, the company has never experienced any data loss working with Hitachi. Hitachi Vantara’s storage environment enables the company to provide a zero-recovery time objective (RTO) and zero recovery point objective (RPO) for vital business systems and data. This has led the BMW Group to consider its Hitachi storage solutions as one of the most solid, reliable and stable technologies in its data centers.

Crucially, this stability extends beyond the technology itself to the relationships and the people delivering the service. The BMW Group and Hitachi Vantara teams trust each other because Hitachi knows the company’s environment, its processes and what is important for the company and its customers.

Hitachi and the BMW Group have grown and expanded the environment together from 0.5PB at the beginning to 60PB now. In lockstep with growing data volumes, cost-efficiency has also improved with every upgrade. While the BMW Group was initially a pioneer in adopting storage as a service model with Hitachi, over the years the company has seen how Hitachi proactively and continuously optimizes its infrastructure and operations. The ability to obtain a complete solution from a single vendor, with outstanding professional services delivered by both local and offshore teams, is seen as a big advantage.