When it comes to on-demand delivery of IT services, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider OpSource says high availability is critical. "If the system isn't running, we're not getting paid," says OpSource CEO Treb Ryan. So, the California company consolidated its mixed, unwieldy and managed hosting environment onto a new BladeSystem used for all its SaaS customers.

ProLiant blade servers, HP VMware Virtualization Software and Systems Insight Manager help OpSource meet service level agreements and manage 60 different customer applications. The high-density blade solution scales up easily, speeding resource allocation as OpSource manages and monitors its IT holdings at worldwide sites as one unified system.

A smaller footprint, less power consumption and cooler temperatures all help to reduce service delivery costs. Management costs are low, so OpSource can cost-effectively add new services and customers to grow business.

"The BladeSystem improves our gross margins because the time to install a new customer goes down significantly," Ryan says. "A big portion of our cost is associated with the time it takes to get a new customer onboard. Being able to do automated deployment really shortens the time needed, which means we don't spend as much money and can be far more effective, get better gross margins and be more competitive in our pricing."