Run Mixed IT Efficiently, The Adient – SUSE Way.

Adient is the global leader in the $60 billion automotive seating market. With $20 billion in consolidated annual revenues, Adient delivers 25 million seating systems used on more than 360 vehicle nameplates around the globe.

After spinning off from Johnson Controls as an independent business, Adient recognized an opportunity to enhance its approach to IT service delivery.

Adient saw an opportunity to enhance its operational efficiency and foster innovation by delivering information services from a single, central point. Their infrastructure is complex, involves mixed IT components and is completely virtualized – using both Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi hypervisors – with approximately 5,000 VMs running across 2,000 physical servers globally.

Adient’s goal is to enable their business users—including engineering, customer and finance teams—to move fast.

Here are a few actions Adient took that resonate with many organizations:

Automate a common repetitive task – security patching

In a growing IT environment, automation of security patches leads to significant savings in resources. You can use your precious IT personnel where they can add more value. Adient’s environment had grown by 25% and they avoided hiring new engineers for doing repetitive tasks by using SUSE Manager to automate the security patching.

Use distribution agnostic tools

When you have multiple distributions, such as Red Hat and SUSE, you can reduce administration complexity and save administration time and resources with a common management tool. Adient had applications running on both SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Adient deployed SUSE Manager to manage their Mixed IT environment involving both distributions.

Standardize IT environment

A standardized approach to provisioning and managing IT platforms unlocks the underlying efficiencies. In case of Adient, they formed a central group that would take on responsibility for infrastructure, and define new corporate standards.

“Because we are now deploying on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in a standardized, virtualized environment, we can roll out new platforms 70 percent faster.” Director Global Hosting Infrastructure and Operations, Adient.

People. People. People.

Recall from the ITU success story blog, SUSE people make the difference.

Adient chose SUSE Premium Support Services and experienced firsthand what 1000s of SUSE customers love about SUSE. The SUSE people! It’s always about the people. That’s the differentiator.

“SUSE’s willingness to listen to our needs and go the extra mile to deliver sets them apart from other vendors we’ve worked with. Together, we’ve shaped a lean, efficient IT platform that empowers our people to innovate.” Director Global Hosting Infrastructure and Operations, Adient.

Above are some good takeaways from the success story of Adient that apply to many organizations. Whether you are switching from Red Hat or managing multiple distributions or looking to automate certain IT aspects or managing a complex IT environment,  you can benefit from running your mixed IT efficiently. The best part is you can run your IT your way that suits your unique business goals with an open open approach and be confident that SUSE is always by your side in your IT transformation journey.

For the detailed report on Adient’s story, please visit Success Story of Adient.

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