Grupo Pochteca in Mexico Evolves Data Center Based on FlexPod

Grupo Pochteca has chosen Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) servers, NetApp FAS3220 HA systems within the FlexPodhttp://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/data-center-virtualization/flexpod/index.htm architecture, and Cisco Networking and Security Appliance for its new data center in order to develop their private cloud infrastructure under a scalable and secure environment to meet current and future business requirements.

With this joint solution, the company has simplified data management and has reduced the time to deliver new applications and services.

Grupo Pochteca is a large distributor of industrial raw materials in Mexico and part of Latin America. They serve more than 8,000 customers each month across more than 500 cities in Mexico. Pochteca is also present in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Brasil.

A public company listed in the Mexican Stock Exchange Market, Pochteca has seen growth in recent years fueled both by organic growth and through acquisitions, and expects to keep growing at the same rate in the near future.

Its new data center is developed with NetApp and Cisco technology. Located in Queretaro, Qro. the data center provides services for the 34 offices in Mexico and four offices in Latin America for transactional applications like SAP/R3 (ECC, BW, CRM) 500 concurrent users, and business applications like email, e-billing and Intranet.

Pochteca is achieving time and cost savings through snapshot technology for backups, quick server (physical and virtual) provisioning through UCS service profiles and NetApp’s FAS3220 storage platforms, and virtualization. Also reduction in testing and development cycles with SAP through cloning capabilities. All these also help to recover from errors in SAP kernel upgrades and test DR.

FlexPod is a converged computing, networking and storage solution developed by Cisco and NetApp. Components include Cisco UCS servers, NetApp unified storage systems, and Cisco Nexus networking fabric. The architecture can scale up or out, and can be optimized for a variety of mixed workloads in both virtualized and non virtualized environments.

Armando Santa Cruz, general director, Grupo Pochteca, said: “As industry leaders, we need to evolve our IT platform and strategy in order to respond to our current and future needs and guarantee the support for company organic growth within all areas of the business, national and internationally.We chose Cisco due to their data center vision as well as the reliability in the technology that has demonstrated significant advantages in their market.”

Juan Portilla, GM, NetApp Mexico, said: “Our storage platforms are our most powerful ever, with up to 80% more performance, 100% more capacity, nondisruptive operations, and industry-leading storage efficiency. For Pochteca, that meant they didn’t have to compromise performance or value. We are delighted to have worked together with Genesi in the process of helping Pochteca deploy their data center’s go-live in record time.”

Rogelio Velasco, VP, Cisco Mexico, said: “Cisco UCS and networking fabric offers our customers the possibility to lower infrastructure costs, reduce the deployment time, improve application performance at the time that reduces power and cooling costs. We are very pleased to support Grupo Pochteca in their daily operations through a flexible solution.“

Pochteca partnered with NetApp, Genesi Networks and Cisco to make the decisions that led to the final architecture. Genesi was a major integrator, taking charge of the construction of the data center building, designing the power systems, networking, Cisco and NetApp architectures, and orchestrating the SAP migration project.