exp Global Replaces Local Filers and Tape
With Panzura cloud storage system and EMC Atmos
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on May 14, 2013 at 2:50 pmPanzura, Inc., provider of cloud storage solutions, announced that
exp Global Inc., consulting firm providing building
engineering, earth/environment, infrastructure engineering, planning/design,
program/project management and sustainability services to clients around the
world, selected the Panzura cloud storage system and EMC Atmos cloud
storage to replace local filers for workflow sharing and tape for backup in its
larger offices.
exp is confident in their cost and labor savings from eliminating tape,
tape infrastructure and associated backup software.
"Sharing across offices was
problematic with local filers, and tape for backup has a litany of challenges,"
said Doug Caldwell, CIO of exp. "But
replacing this storage and tape involved a number of moving parts: Central
storage, local filers, local backup, and workflow sharing. We evaluated a
variety of alternatives but were most impressed by all the benefits of cloud
storage. The Panzura Global Cloud Storage System and EMC Atmos cloud storage
together provide a seamless, drop-in solution to cover all the moving parts of
workflow sharing and tape backup, support our suite of applications, and
provide unlimited capacity. We are actively exploring other ways to use this
combined solution."
exp supports its 109 offices from Alaska to Florida with workers numbering as
few as two to greater than 100 and storage of a few terabytes to greater than 20TB.
With the capital and software cost of that storage growing by double digit
percentage each year, exp needed to find a more efficient, cost-effective
storage solution. After evaluating several cloud-related alternatives, exp
selected the solution from Panzura using EMC Atmos in part due to its value,
integration and improved manpower productivity.
Results to date have been "impressive," according to Caldwell.
Panzura’s Cloud Storage System integrates with existing infrastructure while
providing integration of enterprise sites and a public or private cloud.
Customers eliminate the need for local storage for backup and archiving while
enabling global consolidation of distributed tier-2+ storage capacity,
reduction of storage overhead, conversion of CapEx to OpEx, and access to any
data, anytime, anywhere. Local NAS file services plus military-grade
encryption and FIPS 140-2 validation provide IT control and security in a
cloud-integrated, global storage platform.
"Cloud storage is increasingly
becoming a tier of choice for storing unstructured data," said Randy
Chou, CEO for Panzura. "exp
evaluated a number of point solutions with a cloud connection but discovered
them to be insufficient. We are very pleased and honored that exp selected
Panzura and EMC to meet their sharing and backup needs and look forward to
meeting more of their storage needs in future."
Atmos provides an object-based cloud storage architecture to store, archive
and access unstructured content at scale. Atmos delivers additional cloud
capabilities to the solution including multi-tenancy, metadata-driven policies,
storage-as-a-service and instant access to data from any device.
"EMC Atmos, in combination with
Panzura’s Global Cloud Storage System, helps customers achieve a new level of
scale, efficiency and automation," said Kate Canestrari, director of product
marketing, EMC advanced software division. "This solution delivers a flexible platform to build, deliver and deploy
additional cloud use cases that help extend our customers business."