Tab backs winners in HDS and Cisco
Tab backs winners in HDS and Cisco
Gaming organisation Tab Limited has called on Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and Cisco to help it substantially broaden its technology infrastructure through the acquisition of a major storage and connectivity solution.
A new system, incorporating HDS Lightning 9980 hardware and a SAN fabric made up of Cisco's brand new 9216 fibre channel switches, has been installed in separate data centres in Sydney to support Tab's two mainframes, 20 mid-range servers and 300 smaller servers supporting over 800 PC desktops.
The new storage technology was introduced to relieve the pressure on Tab's existing back-end systems, with the introduction of new customer service facilities via the Internet, speech recognition and other voice functionality having increased the payload on the back-end.
Ken Doughty, chief information officer at Tab, explains why the company decided to overhaul its systems rather than build upon the existing environment.
"We were looking for a system to support both our mainframes, and our family of open systems which was driving much of the need for increased storage. With a technology environment characterised by exponential growth and a prevalent number of disparate systems, centralising the storage allowed us to gain improved control over our entire environment."
"The consolidation principle of SANs has been talked about for quite a few years but not many are actually using the technology on such a scale to achieve these results," says Michael Cremen, Managing Director, Australia/New Zealand, HDS. "Tab prudently identified its business drivers prior to making a technology decision, and yet was enterprising enough to embrace new technology to meet its needs. The careful planning the company undertook in conjunction with Hitachi Data Systems has ensured this has been a very successful rollout."
The deal also underlines HDS' commitment to its new technology partner Cisco, with the Tab rollout marking one of the first purchases of the new Cisco switches.
Gerard Lithgow, director of Storage Area Networking, Cisco Australia/New Zealand, comments: "Cisco's approach to Storage Area Networking is based on the belief that centralising data management makes financial sense, because it reduces complexity and increases the visibility of real time data. Cisco's heritage in networking and our strong relationships with our partners means that organisations can work us to most effectively design and deploy their data management infrastructure."
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