Case Study 2 Samsung Electronics Collects More Data on Energy Usage and Boots Scalability The Business Problem As a leading global manufacturer of high-tech equipment, Samsung Electronics implements energy-saving plans to minimize environmental impact and increase efficiency, by closely monitoring its energy consumption at manufacturing facilities to track usage and identify rends. In 2009, Samsung Electronics built a 6-terabyte monitoring system at its semiconductor fabrication plant in Hwasung, South Korea.The solution collected general information about the sites electricity consumption and more flexibility in how employees could analyse data. Thus, to achieve these goals, Samsung decided to implement a larger-scale monitoring system at its sit in Hwasung. The IT Solution The solution needed to be fast and highly scalable because employees wanted to collect, store, and analyse significantly more data. In addition, the solution needed to be highly reliable and affordable. Hence, in 2011, Samsung Electronics began to evaluate data warehouses to support its next-generation monitoring system. The company decided to build its solution with the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Fast Track Data Warehouse which can deliver both high performance and low total cost of ownership. Company engineers worked with Microsoft Services consultants to evaluate the server, software, and storage options and identify the configuration that could deliver the best combination of performance, scalability, and reliability. Eventually, the team chose a design based on a HP ProLiant DL980 G7 server computer and the EMC Symmetric VMAX storage platform. In 2012, a team engineers from Microsoft Services, EMC, HP, and Samsung implemented the solution. The Results With its new solution, Samsung Electronics improved insights into energy consumption, expanded storage capacity by 74 terabytes, increased performance by times with 75 per cent less hardware, improved control, boosted innovation, and facilitated efficiency. Source: Adapted from Microsoft, 13 January 2015 Case Questions 1) What did Samsung Electronics realize after it had implemented the energy-saving plans? Samsung Electronics realized that it needed more-detailed information about energy consumption and more flexibility in how employees could analyze data. 2) What were the solutions for the energy-saving plans? Samsung Electronics began to evaluate data warehouses to support its next-generation monitoring system where the company decided to build its solution with the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Fast Track Data Warehouse which can deliver both high performance and low total cost of ownership. 3) What were the results of the new solution? With its new solution, Samsung Electronics improved insight into energy consumption, expanded storage capacity by 74 terabytes, increased performance by 10 times with 75 percent less hardware, improved control, boosted innovation, and facilitated efficiency