LONDON, UK. - May 7, 2009 - NetApp
(NASDAQ: NTAP) and Microsoft Corp. today announced that A & A
Contract Customs Brokers Ltd., a fast-growing customs and freight
broker, has achieved dramatic IT efficiency gains by using Windows
Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology and Microsoft System Center
with NetApp® storage solutions.
A & A provides customs and freight
forwarding expertise to a large base of international customers. By
2012, the company expects to grow at a rate of 20 percent per year
by further expanding its services and opening an additional five
branch offices. As A & A's business continues to grow, so does
its information technology environment and the need for more
storage and servers. The acquisition of more servers and storage
has led to increased IT costs and server and storage sprawl in the
company's data center. As a result, A & A needed to transform
its IT infrastructure to meet its planned growth and business
objectives.
"Our antiquated direct-attached storage
system was not meeting our growth and management challenges," said
Dan Morris, systems engineer at A & A. "We were continually
adding more disk drives as a short-term solution to scale storage
capacity. And we desperately needed to consolidate our servers as
well. While server virtualisation alleviated part of our problem,
we still experienced disk capacity issues that constrained our
virtualised environment."
A & A needed a more scalable server and
storage architecture that would unlock the full potential of its
virtualisation environment. Therefore, the company consolidated its
server and storage infrastructure based on an end-to-end
virtualisation solution with Microsoft Corp. and NetApp.
A & A consolidated multiple applications
and significantly reduced its number of physical servers using
Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology and Microsoft System
Center. The consolidation project helped A & A:
- Reduce the total number of servers required by nearly 60
percent to run Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and eight
proprietary applications
- Administer both physical and virtual assets using the Microsoft
System Center suite of systems management tools
- Improve overall system availability using the built-in
clustering capabilities of Windows Server 2008 to automate the
failover of servers
Combined with NetApp storage efficiency
technologies such as deduplication and RAID-DP®, A & A was
able to use less storage and better protect its valuable data to
achieve the following benefits:
- Reclaimed 70 percent of its storage capacity for Windows Server
2008 with Hyper-V technology and backup data from System Center
Data Protection Manager 2007
- Deferred the purchase of additional storage for up to 24 months
by freeing more than 25 percent of primary storage for reuse
- Quadrupled retention times for disk-based backup data from one
week to one month to significantly bolster data protection and
recovery efforts
"It didn't take long for Microsoft and NetApp
to win me over," continued Morris. "The Microsoft virtualisation
and systems management solution provided greater value
operationally and reduced capital costs, while NetApp gave us the
most storage at the best value. I've had such a great experience
that I've begun recommending NetApp to other IT groups exploring
server virtualisation with Microsoft. I always tell people I see no
reason why anyone would choose anything else but Microsoft and
NetApp solutions for their IT infrastructure needs."
"NetApp and Microsoft are delivering
end-to-end virtualisation solutions for IT consolidation, site
recovery, and remote offices," said Sane Adam, senior director of
Virtualisation Strategy and Management at Microsoft. "NetApp
provides one of the best storage platforms to deliver integrated
solutions in conjunction with Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V
technology and Microsoft System Center. Together we're giving our
customers innovative ways to help reduce costs, and improve
availability and efficiency."
Customers such as A & A rely on NetApp's
complete set of storage efficiency technologies that are inherent
in its Data ONTAP® operating system, including deduplication,
thin provisioning, RAID-DP, and Snapshot™ technology, to
improve storage efficiency and dramatically simplify data
management of their virtual server environments. Customers that
deploy NetApp with Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology can
enhance protection of their data assets, buy less storage, and
reduce their overall power, space, and cooling costs in their data
centers.
"A & A is an excellent example of how our
customers are reducing their storage requirements by 50-70 percent
using our storage efficiency technologies," said John Rollason,
Product Marketing Manager at NetApp. "We understand the challenges
our customers are facing to do more with less and reduce costs and
unplanned downtime. Microsoft's server virtualisation platform
gives customers a powerful solution to consolidate their IT
infrastructure. Together, we're helping customers maximise the
value of their storage and servers in their virtualised
environments. NetApp will even guarantee that customers will use
less storage as part of our Virtualisation Guarantee*
Program."
NetApp's Virtualisation Guarantee Program
enables customers to take advantage of NetApp's guarantee that they
will use 50 percent less storage in their virtual environments with
NetApp storage compared to traditional storage arrays.
Alternatively, for customers that already own other select storage
systems, NetApp will reduce redundant copies of their primary data
by at least 35 percent with NetApp V-Series. For more information,
visit
http://www.netapp.com/uk/solutions/infrastructure/virtualization/guarantee-uk.html.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader
in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses
realise their full potential.
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions
that accelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost
efficiency. Discover our passion for helping companies around the
world go further, faster at http://www.netapp.com/uk/.
*This guarantee and related
Program are limited to the terms set forth in
http://www.netapp.com/uk/solutions/infrastructure/virtualization/guarantee-uk.html
applicable only to prospective orders placed after the Program
effective date and are dependent upon your compliance with the
terms and conditions set forth in this document and any of the
instruction sets and specifications set forth in the referenced
documents. NetApp's sole and exclusive liability and your sole and
exclusive remedy associated with the terms of this guarantee and
related Program is the provision by NetApp of the additional
storage capacity as set forth in this guarantee and related
Program.
NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, Data ONTAP, RAID-DP,
and Snapshot are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp,
Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands
or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective holders and should be treated as such.
Press Contact:
Jessica Power
Champion Communications
+44 (0) 207 655 4060
netapp@championcomms.com