Larsen and Toubro Ltd. (L&T), a $11.7 billion enterprise with global operations, is arguably India’s best known corporation in the sector. L&T Construction is responsible for consulting and infrastructure design and development. There is a noticeable rise in energy as the company gears up to tap a market that may be as large as $50 billion in the coming years, as building India’s infrastructure ratchets up. Read this case study to find more.
High-end Workstation Needed
“The strength of our success in construction is our design,” said B. Srinivasan, General Manager IT, L&T Construction. “Each IC would have about 500 engineers working on the design. Our design has always been unique, making waves in research, delivering cheaper structural designs without compromising on quality and strength,” he said. “Today all support is in-house and my team provides 24/7, 365-day support and operating times of 99.99 percent,” he said. A set of high-end workstations running sophisticated design software ensure engineering designs are flawless and construction projects are executed with precision.
Leading Role in Engineering Design
Over the last few years, L&T has increasingly come to depend on a partner that possesses the same obsession with quality and performance – Fujitsu’s CELSIUS workstations are increasingly playing a leading role in the engineering design work at L&T Construction. While L&T also deploys hardware from other suppliers, it has found Fujitsu more reliable. Up to now, there has been “no failure at all with Fujitsu machines,” said P V Jayaprakash, Deputy General Manager, Systems, Larsen and Toubro Construction. “This is critical because of project deadlines,” he said.
Failure rate: Zero
L&T’s Construction unit accounts for 50 percent of the engineering giant’s revenue, being driven by large construction contracts from airports to intensive R&D projects. For the last three to four years, Fujitsu has been supplying the workstations needed for the relevant design work at L&T Construction. Since the rugged Fujitsu machines have been deployed at L&T, their failure rate has been absolutely zero. The Fujitsu’s CELSIUS workstations that were implemented are used by HQ and some major job sites across seven centres, for activities such as computer-aided design. An important consideration in the selection of the workstations is the very low noise level. With multiple machines operating on the same site, the resultant noise levels can be seriously bothersome. Highly skilled design engineers need a conducive atmosphere in order to turn out their best work and keeping the decibel level low was a major priority. Fujitsu’s workstations have consistently delivered superior performance on this front. This has also been a factor that influenced L&T to purchase additional machines over the last three or so years, to a total of over 200 top-end machines today.
High-end Specifications
AutoCAD, the software predominantly used for high-end engineering design at L&T Construction, requires equally well-configured workstations. Fujitsu’s workstations come with graphic cards such as the ones supplied by the card maker NVidia. They have valid certifications that make the workstations ideally suited for using the engineering design software. L&T’s specifications including those for performance, power consumption, quality, and technical support were ably met by Fujitsu. Further, Fujitsu’s channel partner SBA Infosolutions ensured that L&T got the support it needed.
Keeping the Noise-level Down
Prior to engaging with Fujitsu, the workstations being used by the business unit weren’t delivering the level of performance that L&T was looking for in power consumption, decibel levels, and the workstation’s capability in handling the design software itself. Unlike servers in a data centre, workstations tend to be located close to where the design engineers work, which makes keeping the noise level down very important. “After booting Fujitsu CELSIUS workstations, there is no noise,” said ayaprakash. The designers also tried workstations from Fujitsu’s competitors and found them lacking in one or the other area – noise levels, performance or support. “In Fujitsu’s case, there is no requirement for support to begin with,” he said. “It’s been more than two years since we procured the Fujitsu workstations and there have been no service calls and that’s a great thing,” he added.
Fujitsu Workstation Comparison
The nature of the sophisticated design work carried out at L&T Construction is reflected in the careful configuration of the workstations delivered by Fujitsu. A ‘normal’ desktop PC wouldn’t be good enough. Applications such as the ones used by L&T’s designers need workstations that are both configured and fine-tuned to run them. While high-end desktop PCs with graphics processors supporting dual displays are available, they are at best a poor second to fully-fledged workstations such as the ones delivered by Fujitsu. Regular PCs are designed for horizontal apps, such as mail or web browsing. However, workstations are configured to handle an intensive workload over long periods of time, with specific applications such as Autodesk, and other computer-aided design software, as in the case of L&T. Fujitsu’s workstations are both fine-tuned and certified to run such dedicated, vertical-specific applications. Further, they are also available across an extensive range comprising of configurations built around three varieties of CPUs.
Compelling Choice for L&T
The made-in-Germany workstations didn’t require support for over two years. The high quality of the workstations, backed by Fujitsu’s outstanding technical support team, made these computers a compelling choice for L&T. This is reflected in the repeat orders they have placed for the advanced level workstations. It also an important consideration, given the highly-skilled manpower that L&T employs. Any downtime of even one workstation would mean that a highly paid designer would be under-utilized drawing can be viewed ‘as is’ without panning or zooming. Panning over two LCDs is more realistic in that sense allowing a holistic view of the drawing. Better visibility of the detailing of the features is also provided. A second benefit was an increase in productivity, as the time spent in zooming and panning was reduced. One is also able to view two drawings simultaneously instead of opening and closing windows. This has led to a reduction in the time spent on any given task by as much as 25 percent.
A Worthwhile Relationship with Fujitsu
“REVIT with Fujitsu workstations is a great combination,” said Jayaprakash. “It has improved productivity overall,” he said. With the use of NVidia graphic cards, there was an evident increase in performance. AUTOCAD REVIT when run on Fujitsu workstations is complete and the greater compatibility meant that structural analysis that used to take 10 hours on earlier machines now takes only three hours. The tightly integrated Fujitsu workstations’ capacity to render, video, processor, and architecture, all contribute to an overall superior end-user experience. “We are looking ahead to strengthening ourselves with more Fujitsu products like the PRIMERGY servers and ETERNUS storage tape libraries. We are sure that Fujitsu as a company that quickly aligns itself to the dynamic IT trends, has a long-term vision, and very committed. It is a worthwhile relationship.”
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