Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation Reaps Benefits of Recent Migration

The Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation (“BiotechCorp”), an agency under the purview of Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), has improved its operational efficiency by reducing its power consumption by 50% since migrating from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012 R2. This is largely due to the reduction of physical servers from 44 to a mere nine – resulting the overall decrease in server room power consumption.

These benefits are important for BiotechCorp as the company’s core business is supported by the Windows Server platform. “Technology has a vital role to play in BiotechCorp’s core mission – with the likes of nanotechnology leading our vision, we’ve invested heavily in keeping our technology relevant, spending millions to upgrade and maintain it. This is no different with our IT infrastructure,” said BiotechCorp’s ICT Infrastructure & Operations Manager, Mohanakumaren Ramachandran.

“New and improved capabilities in Hyper-V 2012 R2 with world class features such as Live Migration (with compression and disaster recovery capabilities like Hyper-V Replica) make Windows Server 2012 R2 and Hyper-V the obvious choice for us,” he said, adding that the migration to Windows Server 2012 R2 also meant that server infrastructure management and monitoring was made easier.

Collaborating with PeeringOne Malaysia (“Peering One”), a Microsoft Cloud OS Network partner and a leading provider of Cloud and Datacenter Services, BiotechCorp’s migration from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012 was seamless and hassle-free.

Wong Chee Voon

“We aspire to stay true to our vision to be Asia’s leading enterprise Cloud Provider and Cloud Integrator, driving growth and performance for our clients through innovative Cloud Solutions. We adopted the same mindset for this migration project with BiotechCorp, and worked closely with them, providing advisory services for the entire migration and consolidation process, which included migration methodology and procedure testing, resulting in a successful migration and minimum impact to business users,” said Wong Chee Voon, Country Manager, PeeringOne Malaysia.

By moving to the latest Microsoft Server platform, BiotechCorp was able to improve efficiency on hardware resources and operations, freeing up valuable resources for other business applications with high availability and replication. Windows Server 2012 R2 also enabled BiotechCorp to utilize Microsoft’s hybrid cloud solution, which improved agility for on-demand infrastructure expansion while being cost effective.

90 Days to End of Support for Windows Server 2003

BiotechCorp’s move to the latest version of Windows Server has been timely: Microsoft’s end of support for Windows Server 2003 is now at its 30 day mark, with end of support happening on 15 July 2015. Organizations still running on Windows Server 2003 will need to migrate their servers in order to avoid security, compliance, additional costs and compatibility risks.

Thiyagu Letchumanan, General Manager of Enterprise & Partner Group at Microsoft Malaysia explains: “The world has changed since Windows Server 2003 was first introduced 11 years ago – IT organizations are dealing with more mobile devices, increasing number of new applications, mostly mission critical, consolidation, flat IT budgets, the increasing need for collaboration, increasing demand for data and leveraging the cloud. This in turn requires infrastructure that is cloud-enabled, with better management tools, increased efficiency and built-in virtualization. Add that to the need to be agile while still managing costs, it is clear that Windows Server 2003 is not optimized to meet current needs.”

Thiyagu Letchumanan

According to Spiceworks, a global professional network of more than 5 million IT Professionals, close to 60% of organizations which use its tools in Asia Pacific are still running at least one instance of Windows Server 2003. In Malaysia, that percentage is above the average at 62%.

Thiyagu further elaborated the security risks associated with post-support software: “The end of support date means that customers will no longer receive security patches or updates. For context, over 20 vulnerabilities were identified in Windows Server 2003 in 2014. It is impossible to predict when the next exploit will happen and once exploited, older servers can be used by hackers to extend into your organization.”

Gartner underscored this by stating that vulnerabilities can occur at a moment’s notice and cause extended or permanent shutdown of services, and that the severity of the situation is compounded because non-IT personnel often believe that IT can correct any service problem in a reasonable time. Unfortunately, these unwanted situations can arise where no amount of time, ingenuity or money can restore safe and correct operation.

To avoid undesired situations arising from vulnerabilities, Gartner recommends that business decision makers clearly understand the scenarios that lead to impactful shutdowns of service, primarily caused by post-support scenarios, and the options they have to mitigate these business risks, which include migration. Its perspective is one of prevention, citing that there is no certainty or advance timetable for when post-support software may be attacked.

Enabling the Move to the Cloud Platform

While the end of support for Windows Server 2003 marks an important, immovable deadline, there are numerous benefits for IT decision makers to completely move any of their operations off the old platform to newer platforms like Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure.

Chief Marketing and Operations Officer of Microsoft Malaysia, Rukmani Subramanian explains: “Our goal at Microsoft is to help customers realize their strategies in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and to achieve competitive advantage, by using intuitive, 21st century technology. To achieve that, we work closely and intensively with our partners to reach out to our customers. We’re proud to work with PeeringOne throughout this migration process, and at the same time, glad that we were able to reinvent productivity for BiotechCorp with Windows Server 2012 R2.”

Rukmani Subramaniam

A server operating system upgrade can be challenging but Microsoft has worked to ease the migration for customers in three ways:

1. Provided training and tools to partners in Asia Pacific to manage complex projects, especially those involving server and application migrations.
2. Launched the Windows Server 2003 end of support countdown website which provides customers with guidance for the entire migration process along with information about the services and tools available, and provides. These services, from assessment and training, through to comprehensive platform migration services and risk management, help customers prepare for a mobile-first, cloud-first world.
3. A Migration Planning Assistant is also available to help organizations analyze their Windows Server 2003 workloads and generate a summary report showing recommendations and Microsoft partner offerings.

Follow Microsoft Malaysia on Facebook (www.facebook.com/MicrosoftMalaysia) and Twitter @MyMicrosoft for additional updates.

###

About BiotechCorp

BiotechCorp, an agency under the purview of Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), is responsible for executing the objectives of the National Biotechnology Policy (NBP) and acts to identify value propositions in both R&D and commerce as well as to support these ventures via financial assistance and developmental services.

About PeeringOne

PeeringOne is a leading provider of Cloud and Datacenter Services for corporate customers. As a Microsoft Cloud OS Network partner, PeeringOne offers Microsoft hosted cloud services such as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), Database as a Service (DBaaS) and hybrid cloud services.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, devices, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.