Europcar South Africa reduces energy consumption by around 25 percent, helping IT align with a company- wide ‘green’ policy to minimise its carbon footprint, while increasing its productivity by 85 percent. Situation After reviewing performance across all operations, including IT, as part of a drive to increase growth and reduce overheads, Europcar South Africa felt that a Microsoft- based IT infrastructure could support the business more effectively and so it embarked on a major project to deliver better IT services through enterprise efficiency. Shaun Phillips, general manager, IT Operations and Infrastructure, Europcar South Africa, said: “Key goals included bringing the physical IT infrastructure back in-house – which meant building a new datacentre and virtualizing both servers and storage. Furthermore, we wanted to establish a platform for unified communications so that we could enable real-time communication in the future. “We needed to work with an IT solutions provider with plenty of experience in delivering virtualization projects. I’ve worked with Dell before and knew that Dell Consulting Services had the experience to deliver this type of solution successfully.” Europcar South Africa’s environment was holistically reviewed to determine how to map the proposed changes back to its overall IT goals. An initial meeting refined the project’s objectives and drivers and identified key roles and responsibilities during engagement. Detailed plans for the following seven areas of the infrastructure were identified: Active Directory Messaging and collaboration Anti-malware, anti-virus and firewall protection Data security Systems management Virtualization Physical environment. Solution Deployment was also divided into phases, with each phase checked and signed off by Phillips before the consultants moved on to the next piece of work. Throughout the implementation, IT personnel shadowed the consultants as part of a skills transfer strategy. “The phased deployment by Dell Consulting Services was based on its highly successful methodologies and helped us avoid any significant challenges. Furthermore, because of the knowledge Customer: Europcar South Africa Website: http://www.europcar.co.za Customer Size: 900 employees Country or Region: South Africa Industry: Car rental Partner: Dell Professional Services Customer Profile: A Europcar South Africa, a member of the world’s largest car rental network, is owned and managed by the Imperial Group Ltd, one of South Africa’s premier listed industrial groups. Previously Imperial Car Rental, the company has operated exclusively as Europcar South Africa since June 2009 and is proud to hold a Level Three broad- based Black Economic Empowerment rating. Judged as Africa’s leading car hire company at the 2010 World Travel Awards (for the fifth consecutive year) the company controls around a third of the SA car rental market and consistently invests in new infrastructure and facilities to ensure that it offers world-class and state-of-the-art services to business and leisure car rental customers from around the world. Holding ISO9001 (2008) accreditation, Europcar South Africa is a member of the South African Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association and has partnerships with several important service providers in the travel industry, including Kulula, South African Airways, Discovery Vitality and Southern Sun. Car rental company cuts energy consumption and increases productivity