Brewer Accelerates Innovation with Dell

Once a boutique operation founded in 1991, New Belgium Brewing Company now produces over a million barrels of beer a year. To consolidate multiple IT domains, the company turned to Dell VxRail at the edge and in the data center to support its ambitious production goals and to sustainably drive efficiencies.

New Belgium has a history of sustainable business practices in making world-class beers that it insists must be “welcoming to everyone.”

“We’re proud of our sustainability record,” said Adam Little, who manages the brewery’s enterprise security and compliance as part of its IT operations. “As our business expands, so must our environmental concerns, helped by the flexibility and scalability we get from Dell Technologies as our strategic partner and edge solutions provider.”

The brewery said it reduced its annual operating costs by 40 percent after deploying Dell VxRail at its operations edge.

“Several years ago, we found that the cloud was inadequate and not cost-effective, so we brought our IT infrastructure back on-site,” Little said. “Now we can respond faster to evolving needs for apps, software and hardware, having modernized our IT with Dell VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure. It’s been the next big step in preparing for an even brighter future.”

New Belgium highlighted that partnering with Dell has also allowed the brewery to increase output by 20 percent, cut downtime by 10 percent, and improve compliance by 25 percent.

“We’ve improved efficiency, savings, compliance, and sustainability with real-time data analytics and AI inferencing with the Dell VxRail on our edge,” Little said. “Now we can make real-time changes to our brewing and production processes much faster, if not immediately, given the enhanced visibility VxRail offers.”

In addition, the company deployed Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, a software-defined data protection platform. It includes the automated discovery of new devices and data sources, data deduplication, user self-service, and IT governance for physical, virtual, and multicloud environments.

“We can now manage our VxRail resources centrally and with much more confidence knowing that our data is fully protected and always available,” Little concluded. “This saves considerable IT staff time, so we can focus on more strategic projects that add value to our business, improve the experience of our distribution partners and customers, and also drive additional sustainability across our operations.”