Managed Service Provider Deploys Utility Storage for Instant Storage Provisioning, 80% Reduction in Capacity Purchases, and 24x7 Availability

3PAR announced today that Managed Service Provider (MSP) Data Intensity has chosen 3PAR Utility Storage for instant, on-the-fly storage provisioning to support its service delivery infrastructure. With 3PAR, Data Intensity has made provisioning a new customer a same-day operation—a dramatic improvement over the 10-12 days required with the MSP’s previous storage environment. This time savings of over 83%, coupled with an 80% reduction in up-front capacity purchases through the use of 3PAR Thin Provisioning, has enabled Data Intensity to maintain a competitive pricing structure in a competitive market.

“We are pleased with how 3PAR helped us meet and exceed many of our demanding needs,” said Kevin Kennefick, President and CEO of Data Intensity. “3PAR’s technology allows us to rapidly deploy new customers, thus helping to save valuable time and money. Better yet, they assisted us in moving to a greener datacenter by reducing energy consumption and the impact datacenters can have on the environment.”

“The global economic climate is fueling a significant uptake in providers offering cloud-based services as more and more enterprises look for new ways to save on their IT costs,” said Gene Ruth, Burton Group senior storage analyst. “With hosting in general and SaaS in particular, it’s all about agility, reliability, and keeping costs low to remain competitive. Vendors who have built products from the ground up to deliver on those characteristics are at the heart of a new infrastructure regime.”

With 3PAR, Data Intensity has been better able to serve their customers and for much lower cost than was possible with their previous storage environment. The built-in management capabilities of the 3PAR InServ Storage Server have drastically reduced overall management complexity and administrative effort at Data Intensity. Their 3PAR systems required only 3-4 hours for installation and training versus the multi-day setup and training required with their previous storage. This rapid deployment capability, combined with a reduction in ongoing administrative effort, has given Data Intensity more than 80% time savings as compared to their previous storage platform. The MSP has also gained the ability to simply and painlessly scale their 3PAR systems without compromising business continuity. For example, 3PAR has given Data Intensity the ability to change RAID levels on the fly, without performance impact--something not possible with the company’s previous storage environment.

“Planning our storage needs in advance isn’t practical since we often have to add customers at short notice,” said Steve King, Chief Technology Officer for Data Intensity. “This was a real problem for our previous storage environment, but with 3PAR we have been able to add customers almost instantaneously, without any variation in performance, and while keeping our costs to a minimum. This has provided us with a tremendous competitive edge.”

Data Intensity was founded in 2000 by a group of software industry veterans who recognized a common challenge facing IT departments: the need to cost-effectively handle routine maintenance to free IT resources to pursue value-add activities. According to Data Intensity, industry analysts have recently confirmed that most companies spend 80% of their IT budgets managing existing systems and only 20% innovating. Data Intensity was created to help companies break through this barrier.

To simplify their own environment, Data Intensity decided to replace their SAN fabric with two highly virtualized 3PAR InServ arrays. This decision was based on the comparison of 3PAR Utility Storage to traditional storage products from major vendors using criteria such as performance, availability, ease of management, ease of provisioning, scalability, and vendor reputation. As a result, Data Intensity concluded that 3PAR was the only vendor that would enable the MSP to ensure 24x7 availability for their hosting customers. In addition, 3PAR’s unique approach to thin provisioning was a major decision factor for the MSP.

"3PAR’s Thin Provisioning methodology was different from all the other vendors we’ve used in the past; suddenly it is incredibly easy to add new customers on the fly," said King. "This technology allows our customers to aggressively scale their critical business systems by providing up to 200% headroom beyond the current capacity needs.”

“Data Intensity is a great customer to add to our portfolio, not only because they demonstrate the competitive advantage of passing along lower infrastructure costs to customers, but also because their business model aligns extremely well with the utility storage platform we have developed,” said David Scott, President and CEO for 3PAR. “Through virtualization and automation, 3PAR Utility Storage frees up resources to enable our customers to focus on innovation and generating value for the business rather than maintaining and administering their IT infrastructure. And with our current global economic situation, this has never been more important.”