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

Gradwell (the company-hereafter Peter Gradwell will be referred to by his full name) had become the third largest Internet telephony service provider in the UK for small businesses. The company serves 18,000 customers and handles 6 million minutes of incoming and outgoing calls per month, enabling customers to save roughly 20% compared to the cost of traditional telephone service. .the tough get going But one month later, in January 2009, a major challenge emerged. The third-party storage that Gradwell had teamed with its HP ProLiant DL380 rack-mounted servers was proving unable to support the workload. Five hours of downtime resulted as the problem was diagnosed and fixed. And customers were understandably upset. "We had quite a few sleepless nights," Peter Gradwell recalls. "We decided we needed a bigger IT system, and we needed it on a cost-efficient budget. Telecommunications is a low-margin business that's all about high volume. And Internet telephony is a sensitive application-if you lose any audio or there's a delay, people are very sensitive. We wanted someone to help us work out how we should build this system, and second, to provide the kit."