When increased competition from online and similar digital toys and games combined with already fierce competition in its more traditional retail markets, LEGO—a privately owned and family-run business—boldly reshaped its corporate strategy and transformed its culture to focus aggressively on innovation. Following this strategy, the company has rapidly introduced new products, LEGO Games Systems, and signed agreements with Lucasfilm® for LEGO Star Wars® characters, as well as new channels to market. Among LEGO’s business needs were rapid product development, scalable operations for new retail stores and manufacturing plants and always-on logistics to manage international manufacturing and distribution.

1. IBM Systems & Technology Group Consumer Products
Smarter Computing
LEGO: Building the IT
blueprints for business
growth
LEGO Company (www.LEGO.com) is one of the world’s leading
Overview manufacturers of play materials for children. With revenues of
USD1.57 billion, the company employs an estimated 8,000 people
The need around the world.
Staying relevant in the retail toy
market requires rapid development
and deployment of new products and Securing the foundation for innovation and
markets. To support this, LEGO needed a
flexible IT infrastructure that could quickly
growth
scale. When increased competition from online and similar digital toys and
games combined with already fierce competition in its more traditional
The solution
retail markets, LEGO—a privately owned and family-run business—
Working with IBM, LEGO has engaged
in a phased, multi-year IT transformation boldly reshaped its corporate strategy and transformed its culture to
that has used consolidation, virtualization focus aggressively on innovation. Following this strategy, the company
and standardization technologies to has rapidly introduced new products, LEGO Games Systems, and
create a dynamic infrastructure.
signed agreements with Lucasfilm® for LEGO Star Wars® characters,
The benefit as well as new channels to market. Among LEGO’s business needs
LEGO estimates business benefits were rapid product development, scalable operations for new retail
worth USD150 million on technology
investments of approximately USD45
stores and manufacturing plants and always-on logistics to manage
million that have been made to simplify international manufacturing and distribution.
and streamline its applications and
infrastructure.
Designing the building blocks of an integrated
infrastructure
To support this new business strategy, LEGO turned to IBM for help
in transforming its IT infrastructure from a mix of legacy systems and
applications to an integrated, agile platform for supporting business
growth. Working with IBM on a multi-year, phased approach, LEGO
consolidated its enterprise infrastructure to dual datacenters that now
support all the company’s business applications, across all its global
locations, through a matrix of server, operating system, network and
storage services.
Esben Viskum, Senior Director, LEGO Service Center, says,
“Integration really makes a difference to the way we can go to market.
We have one copy of the data, one system, running in the background.
All prices, costs and manufacturing, and all campaigns and initiatives
are driven the same way from the same data for all countries.”

2. IBM Systems & Technology Group Consumer Products
Smarter Computing
Increasing market velocity through automation
Designed for Data technology
• Sales data from multiple channels around Consolidation and standardization in the data center also enabled
the world are consolidated and analyzed
to improve production planning and LEGO to automate critical business processes. For example, now
forecasting. data from different company locations, as well as from the company’s
suppliers and retailers, is automatically transferred to the company’s
Tuned to the Task
• All LEGO data is secured with advanced main system and analyzed, significantly improving production planning
high availability, backup, archive and and forecasting across its manufacturing sites in Denmark, Czech
disaster recovery technology, meeting Republic, Hungary and Mexico.
international regulatory standards and
controlling business risk.
Securing the alignment of business and IT
Managed in the Cloud
• Designed and built an IT infrastructure
strategy
that enables rapid development of Making sure LEGO was empowered to manage and control its new
new markets and products. Employs a infrastructure was vital to the success and sustainability of its IT
cookbook approach to rapidly deploying transformation. To create an appropriate level of governance, LEGO
new workloads.
established clear processes to document its business strategy and
Driving Innovation requirements through relationship managers who read unit business
• Worked with IBM to design and plans and convert them into an IT business case. Once implemented,
implement a private cloud platform
based on consolidation, virtualization the IT department provides the services and measures the results,
and standardization technologies. enabling LEGO to rapidly respond to changing requirements.
Transformed IT from an inhibitor of Additionally, all LEGO data is secured with advanced high availability,
business to an accelerator of growth and
innovation.
backup, archive and disaster recovery technology, meeting international
regulatory standards and controlling business risk.
Making private cloud fully operational
LEGO’s IT infrastructure has freed IT from becoming a bottleneck
to business growth. Using IBM and third-party solutions, LEGO has
created a private cloud platform on which each application is allocated
the processor, memory, network and storage resources required to
deliver the necessary business service levels. Individual physical servers
can be added, upgraded or retired without interrupting the service
delivery.
For example, during peak seasonal sales periods, web applications are
allocated additional application servers from the cloud resources with
no procurement, configuration or deployment delay. After the peak has
passed, the resources are released and made available for use as needed
by other workloads, optimizing efficiency and increasing operational
agility.
Putting IT at the service of business
Transforming its IT infrastructure to support an agile business strategy
is reaping significant rewards for LEGO, helping fuel a 22 percent
increase in business. LEGO estimates that, based on its technology
investments of USD45 million, made to simplify and streamline
applications and infrastructure, it will realize business benefits worth
some USD150 million.

3. IBM Systems & Technology Group Consumer Products
Smarter Computing
By consolidating and integrating, LEGO has simplified and
streamlined data and processes across its operations around the world.
Solution Components
Consolidation has also enabled investment in areas such as data
Software governance, security, management and control. LEGO is also achieving
• IBM® AIX® very high resource utilization through virtualization technologies. And
• IBM PowerHA®
• BM Tivoli® Storage Manager
a template approach is enabling IT to deploy new workloads quickly,
• IBM Tivoli Netcool®/Webtop starting small and growing fast.
• IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus Probe
• IBM Tivoli Composite Application According to Viskum, “Due to the architecture and design of the
Manager
• IBM Tivoli Monitoring cloud-based LEGO Matrix, IT is not a bottleneck on growth. When
• IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console the executives make the decision to open a new office or shop, we have
• IBM Tivoli Network Manager a template for rollout that we can apply to the solution, ensuring that
• IBM Tivoli Performance Analyzer
• IBM System Storage® SAN Volume
we have the right total cloud capacity, and the IT services are ready and
Controller waiting.”
• IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center
Servers For more information
• IBM Power 570
®
To learn more about smarter computing from IBM and how we can
• IBM BladeCenter® HS22 blade servers help you integrate, automate, protect and transform your IT, contact
• IBM System x3650 servers
• IBM System Storage DS4800
your IBM sales representative or IBM business partner, or visit:
• IBM System Storage DS8700 ibm.com/smartercomputing
• IBM Tape Library
Services
• IBM Global Financing
• IBM Global Technology Services –
Maintenance and Technical Support
“Due to the architecture
and design of the cloud-
based LEGO Matrix,
IT is not a bottleneck on
growth.”
— Esben Viskum, Senior Director, LEGO Service
Center

4. © Copyright IBM Corporation 2011
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