HotSchedules: Workforce Scheduling Provider Increases Capacity & Competitiveness with Virtualization

Workforce Scheduling Provider Increases Capacity and Competitiveness with Virtualization Overview "Historically, we've doubled in size each year, and this Country or Region: United States year we're expecting to triple our numbers. With Industry: Professional services Hyper-V, we'll meet that opportunity by reducing our Customer Profile application servers from 120 to 12." HotSchedules provides online labor scheduling for the restaurant industry. Ray Pawlikowski, President, HotSchedules Founded in 1999, HotSchedules has 25 employees, a quarter million users, and HotSchedules has been providing online labor-scheduling services annual growth exceeding 100 percent. for the restaurant and hospitality industry since 1999. With dozens Business Situation of accounts including national chains like P.F. Chang's China Bistro, HotSchedules wanted to sustain robust growth while reducing costs, consolidating HotSchedules hosts more than a quarter of a million users and has its server environment, maximizing network been experiencing annual growth over 100 percent for several performance, and increasing the efficiency of its network administration. years. HotSchedules needed an agile and scalable IT environment that could respond quickly to growth opportunities. The company Solution ®HotSchedules deployed Windows Server® deployed the Windows Server 2008 operating system with Hyper-2008 featuring Hyper-VT virtualization TV virtualization technology to consolidate its server environment, technology to virtualize its existing environment, which can now host up to 19 reduce costs, and maximize network performance. By hosting up to virtual machines on each physical server. 19 virtual machines on each physical server, HotSchedules Benefits increased its growth capacity while cutting power costs 77 percent „ Enhanced growth capacity and enhancing the company's competitive position. „ Better network management „ Reduced costs „ Competitive advantage


"Large restaurant Situation demands on its data center grew. As Located in Austin, Texas, HotSchedules HotSchedules deployed more physical organizations would see provides online labor-scheduling systems and servers to support its expanding network, it our product and integrated workforce productivity tools for the quickly ran out of space and began restaurant, retail, hospitality, and entertain- experiencing rising power costs, both from inevitably they would ment industries. The company was founded increased consumption and escalating like it.... Their concern in 1999 by technology developers and energy costs. In 2003, HotSchedules was was always whether we restaurant veterans who understand the paying an average of U.S.$3,000 per month employee scheduling and management in energy bills; by 2008 the cost had grown to could scale to meet the challenges that are unique to the industry. more than U.S.$11,000 a month. needs of all their HotSchedules develops tools that provide "As we've expanded, the number of servers restaurants." restaurant management staff with real time we need to implement has grown, and our Ray Pawlikowski, President, HotSchedules access to their schedules and scheduling data center costs have escalated," says Matt preferences from any computer with an Woodings, Chief Technology Officer at Internet connection. With HotSchedules HotSchedules. "It was actually limiting our workforce productivity tools, businesses can ability to grow." eliminate scheduling hassles, provide real time communication, increase employee The company continued to take on more retention, and save managers time and customers and deploy more applications, but money. HotSchedules gives employees the it began to encounter higher costs associated flexibility to easily trade shifts and request with the time it took to provision and time off, while making it easy for managers to configure new servers, which could take up to reconcile production requirements with a week for a new account. As it earned more employee schedule requests, track and large national accounts, HotSchedules had to analyze labor costs, and control overtime. meet increased requirements for high availability and application performance. With its powerful remote employee "Large restaurant organizations would see scheduling and labor management tools, our product and inevitably they would lik... [download for more]