Philippine Long Distance Telephone Picks EMC CLARiiON CX4

EMC Corp. announced that the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) selected EMC to strengthen its information infrastructure in order to drive its market position as the preferred full-service provider of voice, video and data at the most attractive price, service quality, content and coverage.

PLDT is working with EMC to scale up its data storage capacity, as well as strengthen its information protection and disaster recovery capabilities, to support the company’s new and existing critical applications such as data provisioning and customer billing.

“Information traffic continues to grow regardless of the prevailing economic conditions,” says Wilma Cruz, CIO of PLDT and Smart Communications Group. “With three principle business groups engaged in fixed line, wireless, and information and communications technologies, we have a huge responsibility in providing uninterrupted and efficient services to subscribers in all our customer interface aspects. Furthermore, it is important to cut cost levels and maximize our hefty investments in fibre optic, fixed line, cellular and satellite networks across the country.”

In addition, Cruz says that a unified storage and disaster recovery infrastructure are required, and called upon EMC to help PLDT consolidate its storage infrastructure, provision less, and extend the shelf life of the company’s technology investments.

Currently, EMC is deploying the EMC CLARiiON CX4, a mid-range networked storage system that features a next-generation architecture specifically optimized for virtual server environments and designed to incorporate the latest technologies in drives, connectivity, processing power, thin provisioning and security.

Virtual provisioning technology enables PLDT to provision less. Rather than buying additional storage capacity upfront, the company can reduce or defer initial capacity requirements and save on acquisition and energy costs by running systems at higher utilization rates. Additional capacity can be added as required without disrupting applications.

PLDT is also better able to leverage its investment through data-in-place upgrades that allow swapping of storage processors and systems upgrades without having to replace any of the hard drives, disk array enclosures and system software. In addition, the UltraFlex technology permits adding on next-generation network technology like the 8-gigabit/second fibre channel or the 10-gigabit/second iSCSI without having to purchase an entire new system or moving to a new network technology.

With multiple applications running at the same time in its systems, PLDT can also benefit from a quality-of-service software feature that helps to decide which applications get more of the available system resources. This enables the company to meet service levels based on applications, without running the risks of sacrificing performance when more applications are added into the array.

“EMC has made it easy and convenient for us to cost-effectively consolidate and manage information and we are happy to continue working with them in this new phase,” says Cruz. “Virtual provisioning, data-in-place upgrades, energy efficiency features and the ease of use that allow us to keep existing skill sets all help provide better value. Aside from the technology aspect, the proven implementation and support from EMC Services makes a convincing argument for PLDT to upgrade and stay with EMC.”

Ronnie Latinazo, Country Manager of EMC Philippines says: “PLDT is one of the most forward-thinking Philippine companies to set the benchmark for a sound corporate strategy in information infrastructure. We’re happy that we’re on this journey together, and we stand committed to help PLDT achieve its business priorities with EMC’s comprehensive, end-to-end midrange products and solutions.”