Telecom NZ Chooses EMC VMAX

In an investment to expand data centre capacity, telecommunications
and IT service provider Telecom NZ selected a storage array solution from EMC
Corporation.

The Symmetrix VMAX storage subsystems, used across Telecom’s business
units including Gen-i, deliver capacity of up to 2.5 PB (roughly 2.5 million GB)
on a platform capable of expansion to cater for future capacity
requirements.

According to EMC country manager Phill Patton telecommunications and cloud IT
service providers have some of the highest demands for storage capacity and
system reliability. "Information storage and data
management fundamentally underpin the operations of these organisations. The
choice of an EMC solution is confirmation of the critical role played by
storage in the provision of services," he says.

James Allison, GM for shared technology operations at Telecom says:
"Telecom’s requirements for storage
continue to grow significantly from both organic volume increases and the
continually developing information needs of the business. This growth,
occurring in both structured and unstructured data, is predicted to accelerate.

"The criticality of
timely and reliable information imposes greater demands on the availability and
performance of our very large data storage environment, to enable business
processes and decision making

"Furthermore, as a
provider of cloud computing solutions, Gen-i relies on robust storage resources
as an integral component to support its ReadyCloud suite of cloud services.
Scalability, ease of migration from legacy infrastructure to new platforms,
rigorous cost management and reliability is of paramount importance to us and
EMC’s offering has provided that in spades."

Symmetrix VMAX (Virtual Matrix) is EMC’s high-end storage array.
Each array can contain up to 2,400 HDDs, provide a variety of
connection types such as FICON, fibre channel, iSCSI and gigabit Ethernet, and
deliver expandability by federating additional VMAX units.

EMC solutions also incorporate RSA encryption technology for data
security and provide automated tiering which allocates where data is stored
based on its usefulness to the business.

In practice, the technology means Telecom is better able to manage
customer data across its offerings. For example, Gen-i customers get the benefits of EMC technology
without the capital cost.

"That means enterprise-class
reliability, availability and performance. Because EMC incorporates encryption
technology from RSA, it also means enterprise class security," Patton
notes.

"Just as important as
technology leadership is the dependability of the solution provider",
explains Patton. "Availability,
performance and scalability remain key components of value for any enterprise
technology user. While EMC solutions are designed with these goals in mind,
achieving them relies on more than the technology itself."

"EMC New Zealand has taken
care to complement its solutions with around-the-clock support and service",
Patton says. "Data never sleeps.
Clients such as Telecom quite rightly expect responsiveness and responsibility
from the suppliers of their core business systems. EMC’s core strategies include
the development of superior products for cloud service providers. The fact Telecom has
chosen EMC in a clearly competitive market demonstrates that storage solutions
are far from a commodity product. When reliability and performance count, EMC
is the first choice."