VMware has announced that Nationwide Services has deployed VMware's management and virtualization suite, VMware Infrastructure 3, to provide a platform for Nationwide's Windows application environment.

Nationwide Services is a unit of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. Nationwide initially deployed VMware Infrastructure to reverse the effects of server sprawl that had pushed the company's datacenter to the edge of its power and space limitations. After accomplishing its objective by reducing the number of physical hosts by over 700, Nationwide realized that virtualization offered a number of other strategic benefits. Most notably, it made the organization more scalable and flexible by reducing server provisioning time, allowing Nationwide Services to be much more responsive to the needs of the business.

Nationwide has a virtual-to-physical consolidation ratio of 13:1 and virtualization has enabled Nationwide to increase server utilization from an average of 15 percent to 70 percent. Nationwide already has $2.2 million in hardware savings with more savings expected as physical servers continue to be replaced by virtual machines. Additional savings are accruing continuously due to reduced energy consumption and streamlined system administration. Perhaps most importantly, the move to a virtual application environment hasn't affected availability.