Cisco today announced that the Hertz Corporation, the world’s largest general use car rental brand, has deployed the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) as its new server platform in Europe. Cisco UCS enabled Hertz to virtualise its IT architecture and easily scale to meet future business requirements.
Cisco initially delivered the Cisco UCS solution to support 1,000 employees at Hertz’s European support centre in Dublin. Following a successful implementation, the system is now being rolled out to over 4,000 employees across all its operations in Europe.
The Cisco platform allows Hertz to centralise control, management, licencing and maintenance of software. Software upgrades which would have taken on average three days to accomplish, now take a few hours in this virtualised environment. There has also been a noticeable reduction in help desk and service management calls due to fewer tech support issues.
Michel Taride, president of Hertz International, said, “The value of our recent Cisco deployment became evident soon after it was enabled. Cisco experts proved their in-depth understanding of our needs as a global car and equipment rental provider, to create a modern and efficient infrastructure to help ensure that our customers and employees are protected, while streamlining operations and improving business efficiency across our European business.”
“Hertz wanted a solution that allowed us to increase capacity in the most cost effective and agile way possible,” said Paul Bermingham, vice president, Information Technology Services, Hertz International. “Everything is now virtualised on a reliable proven platform. For us the important factor in choosing the Cisco UCS platform was the ability to have an end-to-end, single vendor solution.”
“By installing a VDI in place of a more traditional operating system, Hertz can provide end users with ‘access anywhere’ capabilities and a familiar desktop experience while simultaneously heightening data security throughout the organisation by keeping sensitive data centralised and safe,” said Adam Grennan, country manager, Cisco Ireland.
Hertz is also centralising all voice capabilities using Cisco® Unified Communications Manager. The Cisco solution unifies telephony, voice, email and video and provides access to communications services from any device enabling Hertz employees to share data and collaborate from their desks, and remote locations by using mobile applications and portable devices.
