Reed Expositions France Deploys Violin Memory

Violin Memory, Inc., provider of
memory-based storage systems, announced that event organiser Reed Expositions
France purchased additional Violin Memory Arrays to enhance its core IT
infrastructure.

Following considerable performance improvements in its billing application from
its first Violin deployment, Reed added Violin 6000 Series Memory Arrays to
consolidate more applications.

Eighteen months after the installation of the first Violin Array, a second was
added to support a new VDI and new VM servers to backup the first system. Since
standardising its storage infrastructure on Violin Memory Arrays, Reed
Expositions France has seen operational and application performance
improvements, including return on investment after 11 months and a 90%
reduction in batch processing time for billing.

Reed Expositions France, a subsidiary of the world’s leading event organiser
Reed Exhibitions Ltd, organises 60 trade and consumer events in 19 different
industries each year across France. As a result, the amount of data generated by
the company is growing constantly, putting a strain on data centre resources
not designed with speed, efficiency and scalability in mind.

Before Reed installed its first Violin Memory Array two years ago, its SAN
infrastructure, composed of two NetApp FAS2020 and one FAS2050 filer dedicated
to user files services, featured no high-performance systems. Critical
applications, such as the billing process running on Oracle e-business ERP,
suffered from high latency and the company’s IT infrastructure was having a
negative effect on its agility and competitiveness.

To address this issue, Reed Expositions France needed to accelerate the
response times of its applications with higher-performance storage. Initially,
Reed considered technology from Fusion-io, but the solution was not compatible
with the company’s existing 32-bit IT infrastructure. When Reed tested the
Violin Flash Memory Arrays, performance immediately increased by up to 30 times
compared to the old system.

Less than one year later, the Violin Memory infrastructure provided ROI by
accelerating all applications and reducing the batch/query execution time of
the invoicing application. Approximately 30 users in the finance team make use
of this application twice a day and they saw the time needed for each batch
drop decrease from two hours to 15 minutes. The department can now rely on this
application more and thereby increase overall productivity.

"Violin Flash Memory Arrays have
increased our ability to operate with quicker financial turnaround times by
decreasing the lead time required to produce daily and monthly financial
statements", said Yannick Le Bras, IT operations manager for Reed
Expositions France. "The benefits
brought to us by Violin Memory are more than fixed latency issues and sped up
accounting processes; we have peace of mind that our business is running
optimally."

Steven Rose, MD for Violin Memory EMEA, said: "It’s great to see that Reed Expositions France chose to expand its use
of Violin Memory Arrays. It’s a clear indication that the technology has
exceeded business expectations. Memory-based storage solutions continue to gain
market share thanks to their attractive blend of performance and price, and
Violin Memory is at the forefront of this growth."