Technical Case Study
This Is What Agility Looks Like
How Revlon IT harnessed big data with a private cloud
andglobalmaster data model
By David Giambruno,
SeniorVicePresident and CIO;
Ben Gent, GlobalStorage Engineer;
and Michael Cannella, Data and
GlobalNetwork Engineer
If you visit Revlon, Inc.s data center in Oxford, North Carolina,
dont blink, or youll miss the infrastructure. Just two racks
house roughly 3.6PB and 800 virtual servers that process
anaverage of 14,000 transactions per second (TPS) from
systems around the world, with 99.9999% uptime. When
people walk into our data center, they ask, Thats it?
Theanswer is yes, and it runs everything.
The picture was starkly different just a few years ago, when business intelligence
was buried in 21 separate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. High
management overhead kept our IT team from saying yes to requests for new
applications. Buildings didnt even have Wi-Fi access, so chemists had to
jogback and forth between mixing vats and manufacturing control systems
toadjust product formulations.
This case study describes how we transformed Revlon IT by building a private
cloud and putting in place a global master data structure. Along the way, we
converted IT from an impediment to an enabler for agile strategic planning,
product development, manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, and operations.
Now systems work for people instead of people working for systems.
We accomplished the transformation in three phases: building a private cloud,
insourcing disaster recovery (DR), and building a global master data model.
Phase 1: Building a Private Cloud
We began the transformation effort by bulldozing the existing IT environment.
This included re-IPing all devices and systems and building a private cloud.
Ourguiding principle for the cloud architecture was simplicity: single vendors
forstorage, servers, virtualization, and networking and a single Domain Name
System/Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DNS/DHCP) server, server image,
and desktop image.
Revlon Data Center
InfrastructureToday
Simpler, smarter data management:
120% production storage utilization
1,500% disaster recovery storage
utilization
1 person to manage 18 global
NetApp storage systems
Flexible data scaling:
5 times more storage capacity
atthesame cost
14,000 transactions per second
Highly available and reliable data:
99.9999% (six 9s) availability,
withfewer than 13 seconds of
downtime annually
15,000 application moves monthly
30TB of changes weekly flowing over
the network to the DR data center
Consolidation cost reduction:
56% server reduction, from 160 to 70
More than $70 million in cost savings
and cost avoidance in past two years
72% decrease in data center power
consumption
Agility:
70% faster application deployment
Efficient project completion:
425% increase in the number of
ITprojects delivered
70% reduction in the time to deliver
ITprojects
99.6% of projects completed on
budget and on time
We selected NetApp as our storage and data management vendor, deploying
NetApp FAS6000 and FAS3000 systems in the main data center and NetApp
FAS2000 systems in four remote facilities around the world. Had we gone with
amultivendor storage environment instead, we would have had to invest
resources in making them play well together. As it is, we can spend that
timedeveloping new business intelligence applications.
After deploying the production infrastructure, we virtualized servers and desktops,
beginning with low-risk applications such as print and file servers, moving on
todepartmental applications, and finishing up with mission-critical applications
such as ERP and manufacturing resource planning (MRP). Today, more than
530applications97% of the totaland all desktops are files (virtual machines)
running on VMware vSphere and hosted on high-availability NetApp FAS6040
and FAS6240 systems. Were running at 99.9999% uptimefewer than
13seconds of downtime annually. The private cloud processes 15,000
application moves monthly.
The NetApp systems also host SAP front-end software; electronic data
interchange (EDI) transactions; Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server; the
mailtransfer agent (MTA) used by IBM Lotus Domino; DNS/DHCP servers;
timetracking; applications based on UNIX, including SAP databases and
boltons; Oracle E-Business Suite Financials; and dozens of other business-
critical Oracle applications such as the Revlon manufacturing support and
legalsystems.
Server virtualization enabled us to consolidate from 160 to 70 servers, a
56%reduction. The smaller footprint reduced our global power consumption
by72%.
Redundancy doesnt matter in our environment. We have only one server
connection because if we lose a server, applications move to another server
inthe cloud.
Timeline to IT Agility: 0-100% in Five Years
No incremental spending to achieve results.
Infrastructure Global Cloud Global Cloud
Simplification Deployment in Production
18 months 3 years 5 years
Reduced costs with
$70+ million in savings
and avoidance
425% more IT projects
Increased business
capabilities
2

David Giambruno
Senior Vice President and CIO
Revlon
David Giambruno joined Revlon as
CIOin 2006. He is responsible for
driving global technology capabilities
toprovide competitive advantages
tothe companys business units
andshareholders. The breadth and
strategic nature of this project and the
speed at which it was accomplished
demonstrate his technical and business
leadership. He and his team have
transformed Revlons IT operations.
Phase 2: Insourced Disaster Recovery
Next, we increased the return on investment from NetApp technologies
bybringing disaster recovery in house, an effort that paid for itself in just
sevenmonths.
Because servers are now files, we can quickly replicate every production server
to a NetApp FAS3070 system located at our DR site, using NetApp SnapMirror
replication technology. We transmit 30TB of changes weekly to the DR data center.
In our four global factories, data centers have been replaced with preloaded
mini-me data centers, which are half racks populated by multiple NetApp
FAS2020 and FAS2050 systems and a commodity switch and server. We like
tosay we went from two racks of mess to one-half rack with 10times the
performance at one-eighth the cost. Like the production data center, the mini-me
data centers replicate data to the DR site using NetApp SnapMirror software.
We test disaster recovery quarterly, bringing up an instance of all of Revlonor
an individual country, site, or applicationin the DR data center. The solution
was put to the test in 2011, when a fire destroyed most of the Venezuela facility.
With our previous infrastructure, recovery would have cost millions of dollars
and taken one to two weeks while people flew back and forth with suitcases full
of tape backups. With the NetApp DR solution, in just one hour and forty-five
minutes we brought up factory, EDI, and ordering systems in the DR data center
and spun up virtual desktops for employees so that they could work from home
or business partner offices the next day. We would have been back in business
even sooner if our storage engineer had not been on vacation with his phone
onsilent.
We took the same steps to make sure Hurricane Sandy didnt disrupt the business.
As Sandy came barreling toward the Metro New York area in November 2012,
we used NetApp SnapMirror replication technology to move our New York and
New Jersey data center operations to the North Carolina data centerin one
hour. After we confirmed the facilities had escaped damage, we moved the files
back over the network to their original data centers.
Phase 3: Corralling Big Data with Master Data Model
After building the private cloud and DR infrastructure, we turned our attention
totransforming big data3.6PB worthfrom a burden to a business asset.
Revlon tracks 660 million SKU attributes monthly, and our job in IT is to convert
this data to actionable information. Previously, requests for new business
intelligence applications had to wait until we added storage capacity; created
amirrored copy of production databases; and performed extract, transform,
load (ETL) operationsnot exactly a recipe for agility.
We came up with a unique solution to the big data challenge by creating a
global master data structure that automatically sorts, organizes, and structures
all Revlon data originating anywhere in the world. Every 15 minutes, Revlons
infrastructure pulls new dataincluding structured data as well as unstructured
datafrom all global systems. Microsoft Data Quality Services (DQS) cleanse
and profile the data, normalizing it without the overhead of ETL.
After designing the master data model, we created more than 20 multiterabyte
parent datasets. Now development and test engineers use NetApp FlexClone
technology to clone the datasets in an instant and run analysis in hours instead
of weeks. The NetApp Data ONTAP operating system creates these clones with
zero storage overhead. Only new writes take up storage space, eliminating the
costs ordinarily associated with database copies. After using clones, developers
can either make them permanent or destroy them.
3
 The ease of creating zero-overhead clones is transformative for Revlon.
Thereisno cost to mine the data and experiment. Instead, the NetApp
systemsare simply providing added value while they spin platters. Weve used
clones for large-scale application testing, change control, creating golden
images, and even modeling the effect of different e-mail retention policies
onstorage requirements.

We think about big data in a different way than most companies. The traditional
model has applications at the center, surrounded by big data that the IT team needs
to ETL. In our model, big data sits in the center, with applications surrounding
it(Figure 1).
Ben Gent
Global Storage Engineer
Revlon Current Big Data Practices Revlon Big Data Practices

Ben Gent has worked for Revlon

since2001. He held positions with
thehelp desk and PC support before
stepping into his role as global storage
engineer, in which he is responsible
formanaging 3.6PB of data with
30TBof changes per weeka job
thatpreviously required 10 people. Application
Portfolio

Figure 1) Revlon big data practices.

Agility Means Saying Yes to the Business

The combination of the NetApp infrastructure, our global master data model,
and mobility solutions lets us wield technology as a competitive advantage.
Welike to say weve taken the infrastructure out of the way so that the business
doesnt even notice it anymore. We can deliver our application portfolio to any
device, anywhere in the world. And weve accelerated new application delivery
by 70% on average.

The proof of this newfound agility is that Revlon IT delivered 425% more
projects in 2012 than in 2007, reduced time to deliver a project by 70%,
andcompleted 99.6% of projects on budget and on time. Thats our key statistic,
and its largely the result of time savings from NetApps service automation and
analytics tools. For example, waiting time to receive a server has dropped from
6 to 8 weeks to 15 minutes. Our business users never need to wait for servers,
connectivity, or storage. If a department wants to try a new application, we
generally have it up and ready before the meeting is over, and it costs us nothing.

The new agility ripples through Revlon:

Supply chain optimization. The first application to take advantage of the

master global data model was a global inventory report with drill-down capa-
bilities, which distribution teams can access from tablets and smartphones.
Around 80% of Revlon users just want key performance indicators (KPIs)
actionable information they need to do their job. Now they dont need to
takethe time to log into SAP or Oracle for commonly needed metrics.

Increased manufacturing efficiency. Instead of climbing up and down ladders

to mixing tanks to check readings on wall-mounted computers, Revlon chemists
use iPad devices with custom apps to adjust settings on a formulation system
hosted on NetApp storage. Not having to walk back to the office to adjust a
formula avoids materials waste and manufacturing delays.

4

Michael Cannella
Data and Global Network Engineer
Revlon
Michael Cannella has been a data
andglobal network engineer with
Revlon since 2007. During his tenure,
he has contributed to the design and
implementation of the Revlon global
private cloud and virtualization
platform, an infrastructure that has
transformed IT and helped align
ittoRevlons business.
Automated picking and packing. Rather than packing shipments based
onapaper report that might be out of date, warehouse employees refer to
ascreen in their truck to see where to go, what to pick, and where to place
the merchandise. Cutting down the time to package a product and get it out
of the building increases the rate of inventory turnover. And when the workers
in the truck can make accurate moves, we avoid vendor-imposed financial
penalties for incorrect shipments.
Mobility. The NetApp infrastructure is even helping to improve work-life
balance. For example, finance teams working long hours during month-end
close activities can access their virtual desktops on NetApp storage from
home, using an iPad. And our IT team can change a server configuration
ormove data during the week instead of coming in on the weekend.
Reinvented help desk. The IT team processed 239% more help desk tickets
monthly in 2012 than we did in 2007, a benefit of spending less time on storage
management. We resolve 85% of issues on the first call, a rare achievement.
Weve also seen a huge drop in the number of help desk tickets for problems
and a correspondingly huge increase in requests from people wanting to get
work done in a more efficient way.
In summary, the NetApp infrastructure and our master data model have trans-
formed big data from a burden to a competitive advantage, even while cutting
costs. Overall, IT has improved the bottom line for the business in the past
twoyears through more than $70 million in cost savings and cost avoidance.
Inaddition, weve practically eliminated the incremental costs and wait time
toexperiment and are limited only by our imagination.
Revlon employees, too, enjoy a new relationship with data. From anywhere,
anytime, they can connect to the information they need to do their jobs more
efficiently and effectively.
How We Did It
NetApp storage infrastructure allowed us to disconnect innovation from incre-
mental costs for networking, servers, storage, and staff time. Reasons include:
We can commit resources without having a physical disk, a benefit of
NetAppthin provisioning. Utilization rates for production and DR storage
are120% and 1,500%, respectively.
Automated processes keep staffing requirements down. For example, NetApp
OnCommand Unified Manager provides a single view of storage management,
provisioning, and protection. NetApp Workflow Automation creates a policy-
based data infrastructure that we use to construct or edit workflows. We use
NetApp OnCommand Insight software to plan capacity requirements and
make sure that availability and performance meet service-level expectations.
Before, we needed 10 people to manage storage. Today, people are amazed
to hear that just one person manages 18 global storage systems with thousands
of spindles.
We lowered storage costs using NetApp Flash Pool, which is part of NetApp
Data ONTAP. Flash Pool lets us mix solid-state disks (SSD) and relatively
inexpensive SATA drives within a single aggregate, or hybrid aggregate.
Adding SSDs to the aggregate increased the performance of ourbusy SATA
disks by a factor of ten, providing performance similar to serial-attached SCSI
(SAS) disks at far less cost. We have been able to achieve a similar experience
withNetApp Flash Cache. We were able to deferbuying new hardware until a
budget cycle could be built and engineering work done to find the best solution.
Configuration is basically zero effort. As of this writing, were also completing
testing of NetApp Flash Accel, which lets us use relatively inexpensive SATA
disks by minimizing latency by up to 50%. This gives our scientists and
marketers faster access to the data that drives product creation and sales.
5
Our business users can continue to access data even during system maintenance
because of the nonstop operations capability in the NetApp Data ONTAP
operating system. We no longer need to schedule downtime for maintenance
and caching because NetApp SnapMirror replication technology can move
anyvirtual server, including ERP and other critical applications, between data
centers. When we upgrade our server hardware, we can move virtual machines
to the DR site while they continue to run and then move them back when the
server upgrade is complete. Case in point: In 2012, we replaced Revlons
globalSAN core and data center server with no outages.

Another way we protect data is by using NetApp embedded security technologies,

such as NetApp Storage Encryption, role-based access control (RBAC), and
embedded antivirus.

Project Phases
PROGRAM STEPS
Built private cloud in internal data center Built virtual server platform using NetApp
storagesystems
Deployed SAN
Implemented wide area file services

Built global disaster recovery site
Replicated all sites to internal DR site in
UnitedStates using NetApp SnapMirror
replication technology
Automated backup and recovery, 7TB weekly
injust one building
Tested quarterly

Shipped mini-me data centers Migrated application and desktop files remotely
(halfracks containing NetApp FAS2000 Replicated data to DR site
series storage systems) toregional
datacenters

Virtualized all resources: application Replicated everything rather than trying to

servers, domain controllers, databases, understand all dependencies to selectively
file servers, and print servers replicate
Standardized images

Whats Next
Were continually looking for ways to increase the value of our NetApp investment
to the business, and some plans include:

Simplifying the application portfolio: Our goal is to shrink the portfolio by 78%
by 2014. As part of that effort well collapse 21 ERP systems into one.

Delivering marketplace applications that employees can download and use

oniPhone or iPad devices.

Extending cloud access to partners and suppliers, giving them their

ownapplications.

Implementing an active-active architecture.

Deploying NetApp Flash Accel to production environment, accelerating

application performance so that product development and marketing
teamscan work faster and increase Revlons competitive edge.

6
 About Revlon, Inc.
Revlon is a global color cosmetics, hair color, beauty tools, fragrances, skincare,
anti-perspirant deodorants and beauty care products company whose vision is
Glamour, Excitement and Innovation through high-quality products at affordable
prices. For more information, please visit www.revlon.com.

About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that
deliveroutstanding cost efficiency and accelerate business breakthroughs.
Discover our passion for helping companies around the world go further,
fasterat www.netapp.com.

Go further, faster

NetApp Products Protocols

NetApp FAS6000, FAS3000, NetApp SAN (FC and iSCSI)
andFAS2000 storage systems with CIFS and NFS
NetApp Data ONTAP
Third-Party Products
operatingsystem
VMware View 5.1,
NetApp Flash Cache
VMwarevCloud Director ,
NetApp Flash Pool VMware vSphere, and
NetApp FlexClone technology SiteRecovery Manager
NetApp Operations Manager IBM Lotus Domino mail
NetApp OnCommand Oracle E-Business Suite
management software Financials
NetApp SnapManager SAP database
forOracle Microsoft Exchange 2010
NetApp SnapManager for andSharePoint 2010
SQLServer Juniper switches
NetApp SnapManager for
VirtualInfrastructure
NetApp FlexVol technology
NetApp deduplication
NetApp SnapMirror replication
technology
NetApp thin provisioning

Another NetApp
solution delivered by:

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