Swiss Bank Implements Atlantis Computing

Atlantis Computing, Inc. announced that Frankfurter
Bankgesellschaft, an international private bank with 7 Billion Swiss Francs
under management, has implemented Atlantis ILIO as part of its Citrix
XenDesktop desktop virtualisation project to reduce the cost of storage by 93
per cent and improve the user experience.

Axept AG, a Swisscom IT services
company, recommended and delivered the Atlantis ILIO solution to Frankfurter
Bankgesellschaft, cutting the bank’s VDI storage costs and solving the performance
challenges that were preventing the VDI project from being deployed
company-wide.

"Atlantis ILIO is
an enabler for VDI. If you don’t solve the storage I/O problem, the cost per
desktop is extremely high. For Frankfurter Bank, the cost per desktop was 2,000
CHF using our SAN," said Zdravko Ruzicic, Head of Systems- &
Networkengineering, Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft. "If you don’t solve the cost and performance issues intelligently,
management won’t accept the cost of VDI and it will lead to project cancellation.
Atlantis ILIO enabled us to implement VDI for a lower cost than a physical PC
by reusing our existing SAN more efficiently and reducing our storage costs by
93 per cent in the process."

Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft wanted to implement a virtual desktop
client environment to provide secure and reliable remote access for employees
and contract developers that could be managed by their IT staff. IT
management was committed to the virtualisation strategy, but the pilot VDI
deployment suffered from severe I/O bottlenecks and users complained about poor
performance.

The bank considered several options to improve storage
performance, but costs were staggering, particularly given the scale of the
bank’s deployment and limited resources available. Choosing Atlantis ILIO
allowed the bank to reduce IOPS required from the storage
system, cut the storage capacity consumed and improved application response
time for a fraction of the cost of buying additional SAN or SSD storage. Using
Atlantis ILIO, Frankfurter Bank was able to reduce the cost of storage per
desktop from 2,000 CHF per desktop to just 132 CHF, or the equivalent of $2,223
USD down to $150 USD, with a much better user experience.

"Frankfurter
Bankgesellschaft needed to find a solution to their VDI storage problem that
could deliver performance equal to a PC, with a lower cost than a PC, or they
would have to cancel the VDI project," said Oliver Grossenbacher,
Sales Manager at Axept AG. "Atlantis
ILIO was a perfect software solution that integrated seamlessly into the bank’s
existing Citrix XenDesktop infrastructure and allowed them to leverage the
existing storage rather than buy additional expensive SAN or SSD storage. We
have many other customers that find themselves in similar situations as they
try to grow their VDI deployment, and we are very excited to be able to help
them implement Atlantis ILIO in order to make their VDI deployment successful."