Danish Pump Maker Grundfos Buys IBM Servers and Storage

IBM and Grundfos, one of the world’s leading pump manufacturers, today announced an agreement for IBM to provide servers and storage infrastructure for its two data centers in Denmark, and to deliver a new infrastructure for Grundfos’ SAP environment.

With this new agreement, Grundfos has selected IBM’s high-end Power Systems servers and IBM System Storage DS8300 and TS3500 disk and tape systems to operate their SAP environment. The solution covers capacity for operating SAP for more than 8,000 users worldwide and more than 70 SAP systems. The existing non-IBM storage and tape systems are being phased out.

Grundfos selected IBM after an overall evaluation of IBM as an IT and services provider, and based on the advantages of IBM’s virtualization technology that enables optimization and consolidation to fewer hardware units through a single hardware provider.

"This agreement with IBM marks the continuation of years of co-operation between Grundfos and IBM for IT infrastructure, hardware, software and services. With one overall agreement for enterprise servers and storage for Grundfos’ business critical applications, we expect to obtain synergies and operational advantages," said Karsten Steen Soerensen, IT Director, Grundfos.

With annual production of more than 16 million pump units, Grundfos manufactures circulator pumps for heating and air-conditioning and other centrifugal pumps for industry, water supply, wastewater and dosing. Today, Grundfos is the world’s largest manufacturer of circulator pumps, covering approximately half of the global market.

"With this agreement, IBM provides Grundfos with further modernization of its infrastructure that will meet the company’s growth needs, while offering a high level of flexibility and simplicity," said Bent Larsen, Sales Director, Distribution, Industrial & Communications Sector, IBM Denmark.