EMC, a provider of enterprise storage systems and software, has announced that Sears, Roebuck and Co., the largest department store chain in the US, has deployed more than fourteen terabytes of EMC`s Symmetrix Enterprise Storage.The storage system will support a data warehouse providing timely sales and inventory data for 2 700 Sears managers, buyers, and other users.The rapidly growing data warehouse is part of a strategic information technology initiative supporting a company-wide store modernisation program credited with improving Sears` competitiveness."In retail, a robust, reliable data warehouse has become an indispensable competitive tool," said Jonathan Rand, Sears` director of Merchandise Information."Our managers and buyers constantly tap into the data warehouse to get daily updates on the sale of thousands of products in more than 2 000 stores. This data helps them analyse the impact of sales promotions and the popularity of specific product lines or individual items. As a result, our staff is able to make better decisions more quickly."EMC`s enterprise storage architecture provides the high availability and performance that ensure that this vital information will be delivered quickly and will be available across the enterprise around the clock, every day of the year. The scalability of Symmetrix enables us to easily add storage to match our rapidly growing data warehousing requirements."NCR, which sells EMC`s Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems as its high-end storage solution, has supplied Sears with multiple Symmetrix systems as part of the technology initiative. The Symmetrix systems are connected to a 48-node NCR WorldMark 5100 Scalable Data Warehouse (SDW) solution, running NCR`s Teradata software."[Companies such as] Sears realise that timely and uninterrupted access to large amounts of information is a fierce competitive weapon," said Robert Dutkowsky, EMC`s executive vice-president of Markets and Channels."EMC and NCR`s data warehousing expertise and experience combined with EMC Enterprise Storage, and NCR servers and software, provides Sears and others companies with a powerful, reliable system that can scale to meet the most demanding requirements."
Share