Mars Cinema Group suffered from increasingly frequent server outages, disrupting operations and resulting in customer complaints. To keep key ticketing and sales systems online and to provide customers with the best possible cinema experience, Mars decided on an enterprise-wide infrastructure refresh. The company is currently working with Lenovo Business Partner Novatech to replace its entire data center infrastructure with Lenovo technology. Today, system performance and availability have dramatically improved, so that customers can be sure of catching the latest blockbusters.

1. 2016 Lenovo Internal. All rights reserved.
Lenovo customer case study
Mars Cinema Group provides five-star customer
service supported by Lenovo infrastructure

2. CASE STUDY MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT
Mars Cinema Group provides five-star customer service supported by
Lenovo infrastructure
Mars Cinema Group is Turkey’s market-leading
cinema chain and prides itself on offering customers a
unique viewing experience, with everything from IMAX
theaters, floor-to-ceiling screens and 4DX immersive
experiences. Operating under the Cinemaximum
brand, Mars manages 85 cinemas with over 700
screens in 32 cities across the country.
Reaching the limit
Cenk Aktekin, Head of IT at Mars Cinema Group,
begins: “Mars offers a unique movie experience by
combining cutting-edge technology and comfort with
exceptional customer services. We rely on a host of
business systems to give moviegoers a top-notch
experience, and it is vital for us to keep these systems
running smoothly around the clock – otherwise we risk
damaging customer satisfaction and losing valuable
business.”
In the past, Mars suffered regular outages to key
customer-facing applications, such as ticketing and
sales systems, as a result of its diverse, aging and
inefficient infrastructure. The company had several
models of small servers in place across cinemas and
at its central data center, as well as different storage
devices.
“I knew from prior experience
that System x technology had
just what we were looking for.
They are truly enterprise-class
servers.”
—Cenk Aktekin,
Head of IT, Mars Cinema Group
Overview
Mars Cinema Group suffered from
increasingly frequent server outages,
disrupting operations and resulting in
customer complaints. To keep key
ticketing and sales systems online and
to provide customers with the best
possible cinema experience, Mars
decided on an enterprise-wide
infrastructure refresh. The company is
currently working with Lenovo
Business Partner Novatech to replace
its entire data center infrastructure with
Lenovo technology. Today, system
performance and availability have
dramatically improved, so that
customers can be sure of catching the
latest blockbusters.

3. Cenk Aktekin comments: “It was becoming increasingly difficult to manage such a varied assortment of hardware.
To make matters worse, they were consumer-grade platforms and not up to the job of supporting mission-critical
applications and workloads – particularly as Mars continues to expand. Due to server issues, many applications,
including ticketing and sales systems, often went down unexpectedly. This meant that cinemas couldn’t sell any
tickets or refreshments during outages, or process tickets bought online. Interruption to services was impacting
customer satisfaction and revenues – something had to give.”
Cenk Aktekin remarks: “To improve services, we knew that we needed to improve the underlying IT infrastructure.
We wanted a reliable, high-availability solution across all sites, so decided to undergo a complete infrastructure
refresh.”
New beginnings
After evaluating offerings from a range of vendors, Mars decided to replace its existing server and storage
infrastructure with Lenovo System x servers and IBM Storwize devices.
Cenk Aktekin recalls: “I knew from prior experience that System x technology had just what we were looking for.
The System x servers are truly enterprise-class machines, offering very high levels of availability, performance and
scalability. What’s more, the excellent build-quality means that they are very robust and durable – the Lenovo
servers ticked all the boxes.”
Mars worked closely with Lenovo Business Partner Novatech to implement four Lenovo System x3850 X6 servers
featuring the Intel® Xeon® E7 family of processors, and one Storwize V7000 device, at its main data center. In
addition, the joint team is currently in the process of implementing two Lenovo System x3650 servers and one
Storwize V3700 device at each of the 75 cinemas Mars operates.
When implementing the two Lenovo System x3650 servers at each cinema, Novatech converts the active-active
cluster into three virtual machines, based on VMware ESXi technology, for maximum uptime and efficiency.
Powered by the Intel Xeon E5 family of processors, the Lenovo servers provide the high levels of performance
required to support Mars’ virtual server environment.
Cenk Aktekin notes: “With a high-availability cluster in place at each cinema, it’s no longer a disaster if one server
were to go down. Operations can keep running as normal, we can keep selling tickets and customers can catch the
latest blockbusters.”
CASE STUDY MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT
Solution components
Hardware
• Lenovo System x3850 X6 with
Intel® Xeon® E7 processors
• Lenovo System x3650 with Intel
Xeon E5 processors
• IBM Storwize V3700, V7000
Software
• Microsoft Active Directory
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Microsoft Windows Server
• VMware ESXi
Services
• 24/7 Warranty Support for three
years

4. CASE STUDY MEDIA & ENTERTAIMENT
Keeping customers satisfied
Having completed implementation at around 25 cinemas so far, Mars is highly satisfied with the Lenovo solution,
as Cenk Aktekin explains: “We can already see that having a standard, reliable, enterprise-class infrastructure in
place is helping to ensure customer satisfaction, which is our ultimate goal. Performance and availability have
improved so much that, in the cinemas with the Lenovo solution, we no longer get any customer complaints! As
well as delivering high availability and performance levels, the Lenovo infrastructure is much easier to manage.
Where previously there were several different images and drivers to manage at different sites, we now have a
single, standard way of doing things. Feedback from staff has been equally positive.”
To boost the efficiency of infrastructure management even further, Mars also takes advantage of the in-built
Integrated Management Module (IMM) monitoring system provided by the System x solution. The IMM system
enables Mars to remotely monitor server usage, capacity, performance and availability at cinemas across the
country. Cenk Aktekin says: “Being able to keep an eye on the infrastructure enterprise-wide is very useful and
helps us to get the most out of our IT resources.”
Today, cinemas receive technical support from Novatech, who – in the rare event of a server failure – provides
on-site maintenance services. “If a cinema ever experiences any issues, the Novatech team travels to provide on-
site support to ensure that problems are resolved as quickly as possible and there is no disruption to services,”
says Cenk Aktekin.
He concludes: “The high availability, performance, and outstanding build-quality of the Lenovo servers means that
there aren’t many issues for Novatech to deal with, however! We are very happy with our new Lenovo
infrastructure and how well it supports customer services. We are only anticipating further improvements as we
roll out the solution across all of our cinemas.”
“ Performance and
availability have
improved so
much that, in the
cinemas with the
Lenovo solution,
we no longer get
any customer
complaints!”
—Cenk Aktekin,
Head of IT, Mars Cinema Group

5. For more information
To learn more about Lenovo Data Center Systems solutions, contact your Lenovo Sales Representative or
Lenovo Business Partner, or visit: lenovo.com/systems
For more information about Mars Cinema Group, visit: www.cinemaximum.com.tr or connect with @cinemaximum
CASE STUDY MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT
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