Azersun Holding and International Bank of Azerbaijan Select Storwize V7000

As part of its ongoing commitment to
helping organizations in growth markets better manage their increasing big data
challenges, IBM Corporation announced that
two fast-growing businesses in Azerbaijan have selected IBM systems
and storage to help them more effectively process, manage and store their
mounting data volumes.

Azersun Holding, the largest
producer and exporter in the country’s food industry, is leveraging IBM PureFlex
Systems and IBM Storwize V7000 storage to process and store more than 188 TB of
data. Meanwhile, the International
Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), one of the largest banks in the country, with 36
branches and 95 service outlets, is improving access to business information
with a new Storwize V7000 storage infrastructure. The solutions were
selected over HP, Cisco and EMC alternatives.

"We
run a complex and geographically dispersed business, which contributes
significantly to the GDP of Azerbaijan," said Ruslan Quliyev, head of system
& network administration group, at Azersun. "We needed an IT infrastructure to process
our data in a way that equips us with a real-time snapshot of our business to backup
our management decisions. We deployed the IBM solution and began production in
a few hours, reducing the back-up time by a third, which is a great business
advantage for us."

Azersun, which has a nationwide
network of manufacturing facilities with high-volume
production capacity, also boasts a large network of overseas supply and
distribution offices. The company needed to link its ERP and sales management
systems to enable retailers and partners to work with the same information at
the same time. But to do that, it needed to be able to process its growing
volumes of digital information much faster – and preferably reducing power
consumption and not increasing the IT footprint along the way.

IBM outfitted the company with PureFlex and Storwize V7000
integrated solution. Chosen over HP and Cisco, the IBM solution has helped
Azersun increase business-critical information processing by 2.5
times, and reduce power consumption by 30%. As a result, Azersun is considering
transferring several additional business applications to the integrated IBM
solution.

IBA Gets Serious About Big Data Storage
Headquartered in Baku, IBA is one of the
largest banks in Azerbaijan, offering a range of banking services in branches and outlets in 40 cities across the country. To
improve access to critical business information, the bank needed a
higher-performance storage infrastructure. Having considered a variety of
alternatives, including solutions from HP and EMC, the bank selected the
Storwize V7000.

"We
wanted to ensure the highest quality of customer service which depends on the
availability of IT systems and its performance," said Yalcin
Taghizadeh , IT director of the International Bank of Azerbaijan. "We selected the IBM Storwize V7000 because
it can handle our growing flow of information reliably and securely."

Storwize V7000 solution
improved the bank’s storage utilization, helped centralize and simplify
management, and through virtualization technologies, increased capacity. As a
result, IBA was able to expand and manage its ever-increasing
data volumes.

The deals in the Caspian Sea nation of
Azerbaijan are a boost to IBM’s business in the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) region where it is currently expanding its operations in line with
a growing base of clients and partners. Azerbaijan has some of the IT
industry’s fastest growth rates in the region reaching almost 16% in 2012 according
to government sources.