German insurance giant Allianz SE has a big problem: today it has to manage, pay for and power 140 data centers.

This is typical of what happens to many organizations. You’ve heard of server sprawl. This is data center sprawl where organizations simply build a new data center when they run out of room in the old one.

Allianz wants no more of this and is now negotiating a deal with IBM (News - Alert) to consolidate its 140 data down to only six.

IBM knows thing or two about this kind of consolidation as it has long had practices aimed at green data centers and data center efficiency.

Allianz is looking to IBM for a plan, to build the centers, make the migration, and then to help handle on-going data center operations.

The insurance company expects the IBM negotiations to be wrapped up this year.

“The emerging data center landscape will be connected by an integrated Allianz Global Network which currently is in the process of being rolled out. Both, data centers and network together will form an Allianz Private Cloud which creates several benefits, among them the advantages of running a standardized and harmonized technology,” the company said. “Allianz expects to reach the full mode of future IT operation by end of 2017.” 

Allianz History Lesson

Allianz is an international insurance and financial services company with nearly 80 million customers. With nearly 150,000 employees spread across some 70 countries, it is no wonder the data centers ballooned to a full 140 different centers.

Details Sparse

Allianz didn’t announce exact details of how its 4 data centers are to be architected, as this is still a matter of discussion and negotiation. But it is highly likely there will a good dose of virtualization, definitely private clouds (which is just really a higher level of virtualization), and perhaps having Allianz avail itself of public cloud services which of course run on the provider’s data center.

Cloud computing, after all, benefits from the efficiencies of scale. Cloud providers run massive data centers that are designed from the start for efficiency using super-high densities.

Meanwhile most everything today can be virtualized, and therefore shrunk. Servers and mainframes can run hundreds or even thousands of VMs, clients can be virtual, storage can turn into virtual pools, and even the network and I/O can be virtual.