Confidence in a downturn: Growing revenue fast on an HP BladeSystem and HP LeftHand P4000 SAN

Confidence in a downturn: Growing revenue fast on an HP BladeSystem and HP LeftHand P4000 SANGradwell is on track to grow revenue by as much as 60% after a makeover with HP ProLiant G6 servers, HP Virtual Connect, and an HP LeftHand P4000 SAN
"With the new HP ProLiant G6 servers, HP Virtual Connect and HP LeftHand P4000 SAN, call revenue climbed to 94,000 pounds a month. Regaining customer confidence increased our monthly call revenue by 29%."- Peter Gradwell, founder and managing director, Gradwell
Objective Maximize uptime and minimize costs to bring customers an advantage in Internet telephony
HP?customer Approachcase study: Deploy a VMware environment on HP ProLiant HP ProLiant G6 BL490c G6 Servers with HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 technology and HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions servers; HP Virtual Connect Flex-10; IT improvements HP LeftHand P4000 . 100% availability in most recent three months vs. SANs; virtualized five hours downtime with prior SANservers, networking, . 10-fold increase in data throughput with HP vs. and storage third-party SAN
Industry: . 90% reduction in cabling requirements due to HP Virtual Connect Flex-10telecommunications Business outcomes When the going gets tough.. Payback in under one year Gradwell is a prime example of how a company can . 20,000 pound/month revenue increase since full thrive despite a recession.HP deployment In December 2008, Peter Gradwell, founder and . On target to projected 60% annual revenue increase managing director of the company, stepped to the . 50,000 pounds a year in staff time reclaimed for microphone in the House of Commons in London more valuable projects to accept the Best Business VoIP 2008 award from the Internet Service Providers Association. The VoIP . 3,300 pounds a month savings in power costs solutions he and his team had developed enabled his . Ability to accommodate 3x the workload with 50% company to beat rivals such as BT, Enta, and Hipcom lower power requirements for the honor."Keeping the prior SAN system up and
troubleshooting problems on our old Internet
telephony infrastructure took up staff time
at the rate of about 50,000 pounds a year.
That's time we can now spend on more
valuable projects."
Peter Gradwell, founder and managing
director, Gradwell
Gradwell (the company-hereafter Peter Gradwell Gradwell had started using HP ProLiant servers two will be referred to by his full name) had become the years prior, when it upgraded from white-box servers third largest Internet telephony service provider in the and started virtualization. Now the team replaced UK for small businesses. The company serves 18,000 its third-party storage with HP LeftHand P4000 SAN customers and handles 6 million minutes of incoming Solutions. "It's very hard to deliver five 9's or four 9's and outgoing calls per month, enabling customers to availability when you don't have a massive budget," save roughly 20% compared to the cost of traditional says Alex Howells, senior system administrator at telephone service. Gradwell. "And the HP LeftHand P4000 SAN, with a storage clustering architecture that eliminates .the tough get going any single point of failure, is very well priced for what But one month later, in January 2009, a major it provides."challenge emerged. The third-party storage that Gradwell had teamed with its HP ProLiant DL380 Along with the SAN, the team deployed HP ProLiant rack-mounted servers was proving unable to support BL490c G6 Servers and HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 the workload. Five hours of downtime resulted as the technology. The result was a number of new benefits problem was diagnosed and fixed. And customers for Gradwell customers and the company itself.were understandably upset. Confidence adds 20,000 pounds a month"We had quite a few sleepless nights," Peter Gradwell In contrast to the five hours of downtime in January, recalls. "We decided we needed a bigger IT availability in April, May, and June was 100%.system, and we needed it on a cost-efficient budget. Telecommunications is a low-margin business that's Customer confidence, which had dipped in January, all about high volume. And Internet telephony is a more than returned, as indicated by revenue: "VoIP sensitive application-if you lose any audio or there's call revenue had dropped from 86,000 pounds a a delay, people are very sensitive. We wanted month to 7... [download for more]