EMC Corporation announced that Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO), a $3.1 billion New York gas and electric utility, has successfully implemented Year 2000 testing of its applications software using EMC TimeFinder and Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) business continuance software."Thanks to EMC, our computer systems are going to be Year 2000-compliant ahead of schedule," stated Jim Langton, LILCO`s Systems Integration Manager. "EMC`s Symmetrix storage systems and software allowed us to test our applications for Year 2000 compliance during regular business hours without disrupting service or incurring employee overtime charges."Langton continued, "Addressing this issue early is a major competitive advantage for LILCO. Now we can dedicate ourselves to new technology that addresses strategic, customer-focused issues."LILCO, based in Hicksville, New York, implemented TimeFinder to test applications for Year 2000 compliance at its remote disaster recovery site, which maintains a copy of data stored at LILCO`s primary data center located seven miles away. The two centers house EMC Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems and exchange data via EMC SRDF software. Using TimeFinder,LILCO partitioned a portion of the Symmet rix system located at the disaster recovery site exclusively for Year 2000 testing to avoid any disruption to LILCO`s other systems."It was quite a sight to see our systems roll from Dec. 31, 1999 to Year 2000; it worked flawlessly and with minimum investment," explained Langton. "Most companies we know are buying entirely new equipment or building new data centers just for Year 2000 testing. With TimeFinder and SRDF, we avoided that huge expense and enjoyed the luxury of our Year 2000 test data being in synch with our production data."Langton credits LILCO`s EMC SRDF implementation for disaster recovery as providing a significant strategic benefit. "LILCO faces severe competitive pressures as our industry undergoes deregulation. Continuous delivery of vital electric and gas services to our communities is absolutely critical to LILCO`s success. SRDF and EMC`s Enterprise Storage systems have enabled us to create a bulletproof disaster recovery plan that ensures services are not interrupted.""In our tests, SRDF proved it can bring up our entire system at our disaster recovery site in one hour. It used to take two days to rebuild our system from backup tapes. The data wasn`t even current because the tapes were one day old. This is not acceptable in today`s competitive market."Consolidating Mainframe and Open Systems DataLILCO`s EMC Symmetrix systems are equipped with EMC Enterprise Storage Platform (ESP) software to enable mainframe and open systems data to reside on the same EMC storage system. All of LILCO`s mainframe data is stored on EMC Symmetrix systems, which support LILCO`s IBM 9672 mainframes running financial, customer support, and administrative applications.The EMC Symmetrix systems have provided LILCO with a 60 percent performance improvement over the IBM and Hitachi systems they replaced. "We gained tremendous speed along with substantially more protection of our critical information resources," said Steve Trezza, LILCO`s Storage Management Supervisor."We are ready to extend the performance and continuous availability benefits EMC has given our mainframe environment to our open systems side," explained Trezza. "EMC`s Symmetrix ESP software will allow us to create a consolidated pool of information that will cut across our mainframe, UNIX, and Windows NT platforms. This will let us more easily and efficientlytake advantage of advanced applications that are shared by the mainframe, server, and desktop."LILCO also recently broadened its portfolio of EMC software solutions to include Symmetrix Manager information management software. Symmetrix Manager will enable LILCO to further improve the efficiency of consolidated storage through powerful software tools that monitor Symmetrix configurations and operating characteristics."EMC`s cutting-edge software solutions and high-performance Symmetrix storage systems provide LILCO and other technology pacesetters with the ability to easily and quickly adapt their information systems to constantly changing business requirements such as the Year 2000 date change," said Jim Rothnie, EMC`s Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Technical Officer. "Companies like LILCO recognize that the flexibility and information protection provided by EMC enterprise storage is central to their success."
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