‘Internet for everyone’ – is the tag line and lofty goal for GMO Internet Group, a global Internet pioneer that includes 2.1 million corporate and consumer customers, 25 million end users and 66 companies. One of these companies is GMO Media Holdings which manages a membership-based points system. The system is extremely popular – the membership base consists of more than 11 million Japanese consumers and is growing by 5,000 users per day. Shoppers collect rewards points with their purchases, redeeming them at stores affiliated with the point program.
When the IT infrastructure supporting the system was nearing end-of-life, the company sought a stable, scalable replacement. Considering that the company’s philosophy is grounded in the ideal that everyone everywhere should have fast, reliable Internet access, GMO Media must uphold a very high standard of zero downtime for its customers – and so, it turned to Dell to stay up and running.
“If our database were to fail, our members would not be able to log-in and access our services. This would affect the entire GMO Internet Group, effectively putting a stop to our business. The system must run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” says Dai Uzui, Director, Systems Maintenance, GMO Media.
The top priority for IT staff was to renew the infrastructure with scalability and stability as the most important goals. The company worked with Dell to deploy a Dell EqualLogic storage solution combined with Dell PowerEdge servers, protected by Dell ProSupport Services. GMO Media now has 400 percent faster database processing times and the secure, reliable storage it requires for its rapidly growing customer base.
With Dell, GMO Media now boasts a more stable environment, applications that run consistently, increased employee productivity and an improved customer experience. Reliable systems, productive employees and happy customers – isn’t that what it’s all about?
Read more about how Dell helps GMO Media provide Internet for everyone here, or click on the image below to go right to the PDF.