Headquarters
Forrester Research, Inc., 400 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
Tel: +1 617.613.6000 • Fax: +1 617.613.5000 • www.forrester.com
For Vendor Strategy Professionals
ExECUTIVE SUMMARy
European furniture retailer kika/Leiner Group is going green. Its stores and furniture products are
designed and branded to appeal to increasingly green-conscious consumers in its home country of
Austria and throughout central Europe. IBM brought its Project Big Green resources — hardware,
software, and services — to bear in greening kika/Leiner’s data center and IT infrastructure, and it
helped make green IT a pillar of the company’s branding and marketing efforts.
A green dAtA center supports A green mArketing strAtegy
IBM customer kika/Leiner faced several business requirements as it studied the options for a new
corporate data center: 1) Improve the growth capacity, security, and data backup capabilities of its IT
operation; 2) save energy and money through more efficient design, equipment, and operation; and 3)
support the company’s overall green positioning by reducing the environmental impact of the company’s
IT infrastructure.
IBM provided green IT expertise — risk analysis, business case design, construction plans and execution,
and ongoing operational support — that enabled its customer to meet all three of these requirements.
And in doing so, IBM provided a clear example for other vendors in recognizing its corporate customers’
multiple goals for pursuing greener IT, including more resilient and efficient infrastructure, saving
money but cutting energy usage, and aligning with a corporate green initiative (see Figure 1).
The kika/Leiner Group is a family-owned, nearly 100-year-old furniture retailer based in St. Pölten,
Austria, with annual turnover of €1.25 billion and approximately 8,200 employees. It operates 66
furniture stores and is expanding into Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. When the
company’s growth put critical strains on its 25-year-old data center, it turne