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If you think that managing storage for multiple departments in a large company is challenging, try walking a mile in Scott Scheffe's or Rick Baird's shoes. Scheffe is CIO at One Safe Place Media Corp. (OSP) in Dallas; Baird is business development manager. The company has provided offsite data storage services for more than 20 years and currently provides electronic vaulting services for clients around the world. Those clients include government agencies, municipalities, and businesses ranging in size up to "who's who in the Fortune 500."
"We tailor our services to fit the client and its industry," says Rick Baird, "but big or small, government or private industry, everyone wants essentially the same thing: data protection they can count on. Keeping Your Business In Business(TM) is what One Safe Place is all about, and our clients rely on us in some very critical situations. We have to be able to react quickly, without risk of failure, and we need systems that support that commitment."
Xiotech Corporation provides One Safe Place with the storage area network (SAN) technology and topnotch service the company needs to effectively safeguard its clients' data.
An Easy Choice
"We looked at a number of SAN vendors," says Scheffe, "but in the end, Xiotech was an easy choice. The Magnitude 3D? 3000e system gives us the ability to move, manage, and store data for multiple clients no matter what they ask of us. It also gives us the scalability we need to keep up with new customers and the growing demands of those we already serve. When a client has problems, the Magnitude 3D system lets us keep our promise to get them back up quickly. And even if we run into problems with components of the SAN itself, we can adjust them without impacting either our operations or our clients."
When Baird and Scheffe attended one of Xiotech's Datapalooza(TM) seminars in Dallas, they knew they had found the right vendor. "We knew almost immediately that we had found what we were looking for," says Scheffe. "The system is straightforward and easy to use. Everything about it is logical. And from a financial standpoint, Xiotech's licensing model lets us grow the system as our business grows."
System installation was quick and easy and took just a few hours. Getting started took virtually no training. But the real clincher in confirming they had made the right decision was support. "Xiotech's support staff really stood out, and the ?call home' feature adds a layer to OSP's proven system-monitoring standard," says Scheffe.
Baird compares the connection Xiotech maintains with customers to OSP's own. "We were looking for a relationship, not a sale," he says. He also finds it interesting that there is overlap between Xiotech's customer base and OSP's. "We've seen a lot of interest among our customers and prospects in the fact that we use Xiotech's storage solutions. They are increasingly familiar with the company, especially since the Magnitude 3D 3000e system won a product of the year award from Storage magazine."
Significant, Immediate Results Results of the Magnitude 3D purchase have been significant and immediate. "Freeing up Scott Scheffe's time has been very valuable," says Baird. Scheffe agrees. "We've gained back a lot of the time we used to spend managing disk space," he says. "Keeping up with the changing needs of so many customers used to take a lot of time in a direct-attached storage environment. I think any SAN would have eliminated some of the waste, but not as much as the Xiotech? solution has." Scheffe now has more time to devote to the strategic growth of the company. Scheffe details the operational changes made possible by the new system. "Before Magnitude 3D 3000e, allocating storage space was a slow, cumbersome process; now we can do it on the fly. Before, an upgrade meant downtime on the system, and since we're a 24x7 operation, that meant notifying customers and scheduling a time to do it. Now we can upgrade live with no impact and no need to disturb our customers. Projects that used to take 24 hours now take 15 minutes.
And with Xiotech's ICON web-based management plat form, management of the entire system will remain simple?no matter how big the operation gets."
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