Snapfish (now part of Shutterfly) is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that provides digital printing services for consumers and businesses. Founded in 1999, the company has grown to become one of the leading providers of online photo printing solutions.

With its user friendly web interface, customers can easily upload photos from their computer or mobile device and create custom prints, cards, albums and more with just a few clicks. Additionally, Snapfish’s enterprise solutions allow businesses to manage their entire print production process from start to finish.

One of the most common challenges in data center management is obtaining reliable and accurate IT asset information. This includes everything from brand, model and serial number, to function and physical location in the data center.

Snapfish operates three large data centers and has deployed generations of IT equipment over the years. The details related to each of these assets lacked proper documentation and, as a result, the company was unsure exactly what they had running in their infrastructure.

“Powerful DCIM software tools like auto-discovery and capacity planning, along with being simple to use made Hyperview an easy choice for us.”

Ken Lam, Technical Operations Manager at Snapfish

Upon evaluating and signing up with Hyperview, Snapfish soon ran the auto-discovery tool. Within a matter of hours, Hyperview discovered every asset in all three facilities.

Once the data was organized and analyzed, Snapfish used the information for a planned shutdown of their first generation infrastructure equipment. While doing so, they uncovered a startling revelation: many of the servers that were live in one data center were no longer in production. In fact, they were part of the company’s legacy testing platform. These zombie servers went unnoticed the entire time, costing Snapfish hundreds of thousands of dollars in power, space and cooling.

The company moved ahead with decommissioning and disposing of the legacy infrastructure and zombie servers. This action resulted in dramatically reducing their power consumption from 1.2 MW to 0.3 MW. As well, with the lower server count and more clarity into their actual support needs, Snapfish cut their annual support contract by 80 percent.

“Hyperview has changed the way we manage and monitor our multiple data centers,” says Ken Lam, Technical Operations Manager. “Our homegrown solution had been severely neglected over the past few years. Powerful DCIM software tools like auto-discovery and capacity planning, along with being simple to use made Hyperview an easy choice for us.”

By using Hyperview’s robust auto-discovery tool, Snapfish reduced their energy costs, right-sized one of their data centers, and now pay a fraction of what they did on annual hardware support.