Our customers are talking and we are listening. We consistently hear from them that they want storage solutions with the flexibility to efficiently adapt to changing business requirements and deliver results quickly. Leaving their legacy HP storage solutions behind, many customers have upgraded to the Dell Fluid Data architecture that provides more freedom to scale and easily manage their storage environments. Our customers are increasing performance, reducing cost and taking advantage of innovative technologies such as: advanced virtualization, automated tiering, thin provisioning, and embedded system intelligence, without having to make forklift upgrades.
Moreover, our storage IP contributes greatly towards Dell’s ability to provide our Active Infrastructure family with Dell storage, server, and networking convergence. Add the value of Dell’s superior software, services, support and security offerings, and Dell is a top choice for customers looking to address the challenges of today’s evolving enterprise.
When it comes to storage, specifically, customers of all sizes and industries, from entertainment to financial services and healthcare, are realizing the benefits of Dell’s flexible storage architecture. Let me just name a few:
Medieval Times slashes storage costs with Dell, saves six figures
For starters, Medieval Times, an entertainment company with 1,300 employees, moved from HP storage to Dell Compellent to improve efficiency and availability. In one year, the customer has estimated six figure savings on hardware due to virtualization and the Dell Compellent SAN. The company also has achieved nearly three-fold better performance with Dell Compellent. “We’ve seen a dramatic performance improvement compared with what we were getting on our legacy HP SAN,” said Drew Robertson, CTO of Medieval Times. “Our functional IOPS on the HP system was around 360. We are currently exceeding 1,000 IOPS across multiple tiers with our Dell Compellent storage.”
Medieval Times evaluated iSCSI storage solutions from HP and Dell. “Dell Compellent stood out,” said Drew Robertson, CTO of Medieval Times. “We like the ability to expand capacity without dramatically changing the array. To achieve redundancy with HP storage, you have to purchase additional controllers. ”
Most importantly, with Dell Compellent, Medieval Times has the flexibility to continue meeting the company’s storage needs for the next 10 years without making forklift upgrades.
Ecobank deploys scalable Dell infrastructure to support 24/7 business demands
Ecobank, a financial institution with 8.4 million customers across 1,151 branches, moved from HP servers and storage to Dell Compellent storage, PowerEdge servers, and PowerConnect switches. Migrating from HP storage to Dell Compellent has allowed Ecobank to set up new services in just four hours rather than four weeks with its previous HP solution. “That’s a massive saving for us, and it means we can spend a lot more time working on strategic projects,” said Tunji Alabi, Group Head of Technology Infrastructure, Ecobank.
Dell Compellent storage has helped Ecobank reduce its total cost of ownership while meeting industry standards, including Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) compliance. “Our high-performing, easy-to-manage Dell storage infrastructure has dramatically reduced maintenance times, which has a huge effect on total cost of ownership,” said Alabi. “We’re spending less time and money on management, and by standardizing on a virtualized environment, we’ve reduced power and space costs.”
With a more streamlined, scalable infrastructure in place, Ecobank can continue to grow without being held back by its hardware resources. Plus, their customers have greater confidence that they will have access to the banking services they need, when they need them.
Rode Kruis Ziekenhuis (RKZ) leverages Dell storage to embrace new healthcare technologies
Rode Kruis Ziekenhuis (RKZ), also known as the Netherlands’ Red Cross Hospital, migrated from HP EVA to Dell Compellent to increase the capacity and flexibility of its storage infrastructure. Because Dell Compellent allows for more efficient use of the company’s storage, RKZ has reduced the physical space required for disk storage. “It’s safe to say that we’ve cut our rack space by about 75 percent thanks to our Dell Compellent SAN,” said Marcel Bunnik, IT Team Leader, RKZ. Its former HP storage solution required two 19-inch racks fully populated with hard drives, but the Dell Compellent system provides more storage capability in less than half a rack and reduces energy use and cooling requirements.
As part of its digital transformation, RKZ also has leveraged Dell Compellent to take advantage of technologies such as electronic medical records and medical image archiving that can generate massive amounts of data. Its former HP storage system could not meet RKZ’s growing need to expand quickly. “We were attracted by the price and quality of the Dell Compellent system, but more importantly, the vision we have as an IT department perfectly matched Compellent’s capabilities, particularly its support of virtualization and the flexibility it brings to the IT environment,” said Bunnik.
Dell is committed to thoughtfully developing continued innovations in our Fluid Data architecture and delivering a new customer experience for storage, as covered most recently in this blog post. While Dell storage can go toe-to-toe with the best, it also plays a critical role in our ability to offer end-to-end enterprise solutions that enable customers to better support their organization and deliver the speed, efficiency and resiliency required in a rapidly-changing world.