Appleton uses Dell to manage assets

Appleton Asset Management, part of the international Appleton Group, has opted for Dell technology to consolidate its local SAN environment. The company has also purchased PowerEdge servers to be used in an international capacity.

Appleton`s SAN environment is currently home to two PowerEdge 6400 servers, a PowerVault 660F and two PowerVault 51F switches, all fully configured. According to Alastair Davidson, IT executive at Appleton Asset Management, the rationale behind implementing Dell products was straightforward. "Dell offered us stable products and excellent after-sales support, at a very competitive price."

Davidson adds that Dell`s Premier Pages - a customised Internet ordering facility - ensures instant access to order information, product support, as well as current pricing. "In short, it is user friendly and very effective," he says. "It also makes more sense to deal directly with the supplier. This way one transacts with a single entity, responsible for each stage of the process, from order to delivery. Naturally we found it beneficial to cut out the middle man and his usual inflated overheads."

According to Davidson, it was important for Appleton to connect with local companies similar in size using Dell hardware, before signing on the dotted line. "We found that Dell has a growing reputation in the local storage space and boasts many a satisfied client. However, the decision was not based on reputation alone - for us, the products, pricing and support were just right."

Appleton Asset Management consists of three divisions including investments, private investors and a stock brokering section. With the company`s history of database proliferation, a stable and secure product had to be selected to draw these together. This was the reasoning behind the SAN and PowerEdge 6400 being used to create a pure database server environment.

The second PowerEdge 6400 is being used for fail over, which includes all application servers and databases. "We consider this a mission critical environment as it records disc activity in underlying application servers," explains Davidson.

Sean Wainer, enterprise product manager at Dell SA, says the servers purchased by Appleton locally will be used to drive the company`s international unit trust applications and their Web interfaces. "Naturally it made more sense for these purchases to be done in bulk, however, this underscores Dell`s international capability and after-sales support infrastructure."