When you talk to as many customers as we do, you start to realize that IT infrastructures typically either thwart or propel business expansion – meaning that the right or wrong business decision can be a game changer for a business. Take Esprinet’s story, one of Europe’s largest distributors of IT and consumer electronics. After years of steady growth, the company found itself with a hodgepodge of HP, IBM and EMC storage systems, each supporting different aspects of the business and bringing a level of IT complexity that made growth challenging.
We spoke with Esprinet’s Chief Technology Officer, Cesare Pedrazzini, who explained that managing such a complex storage infrastructure was time-consuming and costly. Cesare said: “Despite having a slew of storage equipment, we needed more capacity as Esprinet continued to grow, and this meant a new storage solution that could grow along with us.”
Esprinet decided to trade-in their multi-vendor storage solution and consolidate to a single vendor. They immediately eliminated HP from contention, after experiencing significant performance issues with their current HP system. After evaluating IBM and EMC, Esprinet selected EMC VNX unified storage to consolidate their Oracle and SQL Server databases and applications. Why? Cesare said: “We chose VNX because it offered the ideal balance of performance, scalability and price. Comparable technology from IBM would have been significantly more expensive.”
This proved to be a smart move for a number of reasons. First, Esprinet’s storage performance accelerated dramatically: I/O throughput for critical applications such as order processing increased 65%, thanks to implementing a FLASH 1st strategy on VNX. In fact, Esprinet meets 80% of their I/O demand using Flash drives, which account for only 1% of total drive capacity. Talk about a win!
Leveraging automation inherent in the VNX’s FAST VP, IT administration is also substantially more efficient. “With an IT infrastructure that’s 70% virtualized, the tight integration between VNX and VMware has been huge and it has made it easier for our IT administrators to monitor the storage space used by virtual machines,” Casare said.
Casare also noted the performance boost from their VNX enables Esprinet’s data warehouse team to deliver business reports an hour faster every day. With five extra hours a week to work on other projects, Esprinet’s IT department can spend more time adding value to the business.
Consolidating on VNX reduced Esprinet’s physical footprint by 75%. The company uses 33% fewer drives improving the energy efficiency of their data center by 39%. Best of all, the compact storage footprint of the VNX has provided Esprinet the extra capacity needed to support business growth for years to come.
“We have a small IT staff, so operating as efficiently as possible is essential,” said Casare. “VNX has allowed us to achieve greater efficiency. We’re extremely pleased with our choice and know we can count on EMC’s expertise and support to continue transforming IT into an enabler of business growth and profitability.”
Efficiency is the name of the game for so many of our customers, and Esprinet is one of many capturing significant gains and the cost savings with VNX. What could you do for your business if your storage infrastructure became more efficient?
