American University of Kuwait Ops for EMC

EMC Corporation announced that the American University of Kuwait (AUK) has
selected EMC and VMware virtualization and cloud infrastructure technologies to
transform its IT infrastructure and help manage its mission-critical
applications, including Exchange 2010, Oracle, Luminis Portal and LMS
Moodle.

AUK is using EMC VNX unified storage with EMC FAST Suite and vSphere to better
handle rapid business growth and improve response time for IT requests from
staff and students.

Customer Benefits:

• 
  Efficiency: AUK has improved storage utilization 400%, increasing available
  storage space from 6TB to 24TB, at zero additional cost with EMC VNX.
• Performance: VNX has
  enabled AUK to improve the performance of its Microsoft and Oracle
  mission-critical applications by 50%.
• Streamlined Administration: Integration
  between Unisphere and vSphere has allowed AUK to simplify management, reducing
  time to deliver new IT resources to internal users by 66%.
• ROI: Increased efficiency and
  a cost savings of $35,000 will enable AUK to achieve a return on its investment
  in VNX in just 24 months.

With
increasing demands from students, faculty and staff for 24/7 access to
educational and administrative content, the AUK
planned to replace its previous storage environment for improved performance of
mission-critical applications. It needed a solution that could provide
the increased system performance, cost-savings and the flexibility needed to
meet the growing needs of its internal users as well as support its ongoing
virtualization strategy.

AUK
selected VNX unified storage for its integration with VMware, as well
as the performance and cost benefits of a FLASH 1st strategy. With VNX, AUK has
achieved 400% greater storage utilization and 50% better performance.
Additionally, the better efficiency using VNX has enabled AUK to save $35,000
on maintenance cost and will insure ROI in two years.

Rusty
Burns, director of IT, American University of Kuwait, said: "We selected EMC VNX because it provides us
with the high level of efficiency, scalability and performance required to meet
the growing demands from our students and staff. The tight integration between
VNX and VMware allows us to easily scale and create new VMs right from our
server console in one step. We can now see the entire environment and shared
storage to provision any changes.

"This increased flexibility and availability,
along with simplified system management, has enabled us to better service our
students and provide them continuous 24/7 access to the critical applications
that they demand, such as the learning management system or online curriculum.

"We expect to see a return on our investment
in VNX in just 24 months, and look forward to achieving an ever-higher level of
performance and availability as we continue to virtualize our infrastructure.

Habib
Mahakian, regional director, North Gulf, Levant and Pakistan area, EMC, said:
"AUK was looking for a best-of-breed
solution that could increase storage performance and support its ongoing
virtualization program, while simplifying the management of its
mission-critical applications and improving its ability to meet the growing
needs of its internal users. With EMC VNX, AUK has been able to successfully
transform its IT infrastructure and achieve the increased performance and
scalability needed to meet current user demands, while capturing the
flexibility required to support anticipated growth."