Life assuror Capital Alliance is reaping the benefits of significantly improved performance and reduced IT costs after a R6-million storage upgrade which it says reflects the strategic value of storage in today`s business environment.
In the upgrade, Comparex Africa`s data centre specialist Persetel Q Vector installed an EMCCLARiiON FC4700 high-end solution and a Sun Fire 4800 mid-range server as apart of a package aimed at consolidating Capital Alliance`s storage onto a storage-area network (SAN), doubling storage capacity and reducing management costs.
"Storage has become a critical strategic issue in our business," said Colin Brazer, IT manager at Capital Alliance. "We`ve always had a low cost per policy in the South African assurance industry, and one of the keys to keeping our premiums competitive is in maintaining the lowest possible total cost of ownership (TCO) in our IT systems."
The CLARiiON FC4700, with 2 terabytes of capacity and plenty of space for future expansion, has played a key role in consolidating Capital Alliance`s heterogeneous storage environment. Since its installation, Capital Alliance has reduced unplanned downtime and improved revenue generation through the use of highly available, fully redundant storage. The Sun Fire 4800, which has increased Capital Alliance`s processing speed "exponentially", has also brought vast flexibility and availability to the table with full redundancy, "hot" CPU upgrades and scaleability up to 12 750MHz risk processors.
"The solution that Comparex has provided us has allowed us to take on significant new business and contain costs, while at the same time protecting our investment in storage far more effectively than we would have in a non-consolidated environment," said Brazer.
Bertus van Heerden, divisional product manager at Persetel Q Vector, says the only way to contain costs and manage huge amounts of data efficiently is to position the data away from the servers where it is created, into a central repository accessible by many applications.
"Storage-area networks (SANs) do for data retrieval what conventional computer networks do for processing; they link disparate servers into a unified, sharable resource," said Van Heerden.
"They help our customers reduce complexity, lower management costs, and automate many labour-intensive and inefficient processes."
Nicknamed "the chameleon" by its designers at EMC, the FC4700 has the ability to cope with heterogeneous environments which have a number of operating systems and accelerate server deployments through storage consolidation and multiple-host connectivity.
The FC4700 can be implemented in a SAN environment or redeployed in a NAS environment by simply swapping its storage processors and attachment personality, loading file system support software, configuring the file systems, and loading data.
The Sun Fire 4800 has already attracted keen interest in the data centre with its flexibility and impressive total system performance. Although a general purpose server suitable for most industries, it has shown itself to be particularly suited to applications like server consolidation, databases and high-performance computing.
Shelton Jooste, a sales executive in Comparex`s Johannesburg regional sales office, said a key element of the deal was the fact that Capital Alliance`s infrastructure could be wholly managed through Comparex`s 24x7 helpdesk, irrespective of the platform.
"We`re not just concentrated on storage, or processing - we focus on supplying our clients with an integrated solution, which marries the best components we can source with full maintenance and backup," said Jooste. "That`s where the magic of developing a relationship with our clients comes into its own."
Capital Alliance was created through the merger of IGI Life, Traduna, AA Life, ACA Insurers, Standard General and the recent acquisition of Fedsure Life. The company has a staff complement of over 1000, operating from a corporate head office in Johannesburg and a network of branches countrywide. ENDS
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As the data centre specialist within the giant Information Technology group Comparex Africa, Persetel Q Vector assists South African companies to become more cost-effective by transforming their data centres to meet the demands of the e-business era. It creates business-focused data centres, which become a significant competitive advantage for its customers, by using its expertise in enterprise-wide business-critical systems like enterprise storage, storage area networks, data warehousing and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
Persetel Q Vector has close relationships with key vendors in the data centre industry, including high-availability storage sub-systems leaders EMC, Unix-based server specialists Sun Microsystems, mainframe and data processing giant IBM and Computer Network Technologies (CNT), a US-based storage network provider. This allows the company to provide greater choice, better business value and specifically tailored offerings to its customers. The company also has the ability to draw on skills from within the Comparex Africa group and from its business partners worldwide.
Persetel Q Vector`s technical capabilities are supported by a dedicated team of professionals, skilled both in project management and specialist open system disciplines.
Persetel was formed in June 1999 through the merger of Persetel Open Systems and Persetel Mainframe Systems. In September 2001, Persetel and fellow Comparex Africa data centre specialist Q Vector merged their management structures to form Persetel Q Vector. The company`s head office is in Midrand, with regional offices in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban.
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