SUNNYVALE, Calif.- June 14,
2012-Travelers today move around the world quicker than
ever before. To keep up, travel insurance companies need a reliable
IT infrastructure with zero downtime to provide customers with
travel support and insurance 24/7/365. Seven Corners, Inc., one of
the most experienced international travel insurance and specialty
benefit companies in the industry, turned to the FlexPod® data
center platform, a pretested data center solution built on a
flexible, scalable shared infrastructure designed collaboratively
by Cisco and NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) to efficiently scale to meet a
world of travelers' needs.
Seven Corners has over 170 permanent
employees located in the midwest, and roughly 10,000 agents and 900
brokers worldwide. Until recently, the IT department was limited in
its capabilities by an aging infrastructure that caused outages and
by recovery costs approaching $3,000 daily just to maintain 24/7
operations. The company needed a cost-effective solution, and
fast.
Chief Information Officer George L. Reed II
turned to Netech, a leading provider of IP-based integration
services, for a solution that would make IT a strategic part of
Seven Corners' aggressive growth plan. Netech suggested a FlexPod
solution that combines the best of NetApp®, Cisco®, and
VMware® solutions to deliver immediate engineering value with
scalability and configuration flexibility to enable all phases of
Seven Corners' strategic plan.
Seven Corners Goes further, faster
with FlexPod
- Zero downtime delivers 8-month ROI: By
successfully reducing an average of 12 daily outages across Seven
Corners' core physical servers to 0, the company realized roughly
$750,000 annual savings in the first eight months of
deployment.
- More effective claims: Employees in the Claims
Department can now work remotely, resulting in no lost time during
severe weather. In addition, the faster systems cut the time it
takes to process a claim from 15-20 minutes to roughly 15-20
seconds.
- Capacity savings: Seven Corners was able to
reduce usage to 60% less storage, the equivalent of a year's worth
of new capacity for the organization. The extra space allowed the
company to expedite the next two phases of the project, including
deploying a virtual desktop environment approximately two years
earlier than planned.
- Staff and IT resource savings: In the first
three months of deploying the new solution, the percentage of IT
dollars spent on break-fix dropped from 80% to 16% and the staff
required to support the IT infrastructure was reduced by 40%. The
saved resources enable staff to do more with less across the
company.
Supporting Quotes
- Peter Howard, Senior Director, Data Center Alliances,
NetApp
"Providing high-quality travel insurance and benefits services is
Seven Corners' mission, and key to making this happen is their
ability to meet growing traveler requirements for the latest in
technology tools. With an IT foundation
built on FlexPod, they are now able to achieve greater IT and cost
efficiencies that allow them to scale quickly and easily so they
can focus on IT being an integral part of helping to grow the
business."
- George L. Reed II, Chief Information Officer, Seven
Corners, Inc.
"In our business, where customers are clamoring for new services,
time to market determines which company gets the business-typically
the first to deliver wins 60% of the revenue. The agility and
flexibility we've gained from FlexPod helps us deliver products
faster, quickly identify and reduce losses on unproductive
programs, and rapidly capitalize on successes."
Additional Resources
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions
that deliver outstanding cost efficiency and accelerate business
breakthroughs. Our commitment to living our core values and
consistently being recognized as a great place to work around the
world are fundamental to our long-term growth and success, as well
as the success of our pathway partners and customers. Discover our
passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster
at www.netapp.com.
Press Contact:
NetApp PR
(408) 822-3287
xdl-uspr@netapp.com
NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further,
faster, and FlexPod are trademarks or registered trademarks of
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trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and
should be treated as such.
The use of the word "partner" or
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