Maxta Hyperconvergence Software Reduces IT Infrastructure Costs for Lewis & Knopf

Maxta Inc., provider of hyperconvergence software, announced  Lewis & Knopf, CPAs, P.C., a full-service accounting and consulting firm with multiple offices in Michigan, reduced its IT infrastructure costs by 80% using its software and commodity servers.

The hyperconverged environment allows Lewis & Knopf to choose from most brands of server hardware, have a choice in hypervisors, scale storage and compute resources independently, and does not require the purchase of a new software license when refreshing servers.

Lewis & Knopf specializes in helping its entrepreneurial clients – retailers, auto dealerships, manufacturing and distribution enterprises, construction companies, providers of professional services, and more – maintain healthy financial positions. In order to do so, the firm must maintain a healthy IT infrastructure of its own.

When the time came to upgrade its 10-year-old traditional SAN/server setup, Lewis & Knopf IT advisor James Johnson heeded the company’s vision of sound planning and wise choices in investigating new solutions. After deciding not to replace his aging SAN with a new model, he investigated hyperconvergence as a way to reduce the administrative load of managing separate compute, storage and storage networking resources. He began by looking at hyperconverged appliance-based products, but felt that, like a SAN, it limited future scaling and locked him into costs to update and maintain.

“The SAN and the hyperconverged appliances both were, to me, pretty price and I did not want to be locked into specific hardware,” Johnson said. “I looked at quite a few hyperconverged solutions, many of which promoted themselves as ‘Hyperconvergence Software.’ The hardware they would run on was pretty strict and I just didn’t want to be locked down.  I said: ‘No, that’s not the hardware I want.’ I had to be really specific. So we ended up going with Maxta and I was able to install it on the hardware that I wanted, not the hardware they offered.“

While all hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions are designed to help simplify IT management by converging separate compute, storage and storage networking tiers into a single system, as well as administering VMs instead of storage, many of these solutions lock customers into specific hardware or hypervisors. Maxta hyperconvergence software eliminates the lock-in of server hardware or hypervisors. Unlike appliance-based hyperconverged solutions, the company enables customers to upgrade storage capacity by adding SSDs or disk drives to existing servers instead of requiring the customer to add complete nodes. Maxta does not require customers to repurchase hyperconverged software licenses when refreshing the server hardware.

“For an accounting and consulting firm that prides itself on making wise choices to maintain a healthy financial position, it makes perfect sense that Lewis & Knopf sought out a solution that overcomes the high price tag associated with IT infrastructure upgrades,” said Yoram Novick, Maxta founder and chief executive. “And unlike appliance-based hyperconverged solutions that make you repurchase the software license when you refresh hardware or implement additional appliances when adding storage capacity, Maxta software allows organization,o eliminate the unnecessary refresh and upgrade tax to provide true cost savings while providing ultimate freedom of choice.“