EMC HELPS U.K. POLICE FORCE FIGHT CRIME WITH POWERFUL STORAGE SYSTEM; U.K. Police Force Stores More than Four Million Fingerprint Sets and Information On Millions of Vehicles on EMC System

Business Wire, June 7, 1995

HOPKINTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 7, 1995--EMC Corporation, the world's leading independent provider of information storage and retrieval technology, today announced that the U.K. government's Police National Computer data center has chosen Symmetrix Integrated Cached Disk Array (ICDA). The high-performance EMC storage system provides the U.K. police forces with less-than-one-second access to more than four million fingerprint sets and information on millions of vehicles.

The Symmetrix system delivers storage to PNC's 55 million database records, which also include information about missing persons, criminals, and property. Already, PNC's performance analysis has shown that EMC's Symmetrix has improved average response times by 15 percent and freed substantial amounts of main memory for other functions.

"EMC's Symmetrix system has given us performance and availability beyond our expectations," said Arthur Taylor, computer operations manager at PNC's Herndon Data Center. "These improved response times directly affect the police and allow them to react to situations faster. The best way we can support the officer in the street is by providing the most efficient information service."

Performance and data availability are crucial because the PNC data center serves a network of directly connected terminals and local police force computers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. After evaluating its requirements for additional disk capacity, PNC decided to mirror its data for high reliability. After an extensive evaluation of data storage systems, PNC chose EMC's Symmetrix system with RAID 1 (mirroring) data protection.

"As part of our acceptance procedures, we ran a number of tests to validate EMC's availability claims," added Taylor. "Firstly, the power supply to the disk was cut off, but the battery back up cut in without any disruption to service. Next, we simulated a disk failure; the data on the failed disk copied to the spare and full service was quickly restored. Finally, we tested the remote (customer) support facility, which performed as promised."

EMC Corporation is a world leader in enterprise-wide information storage and retrieval technology, designing systems for mainframe, midrange and open systems environments. The company has offices worldwide and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol EMC.

CONTACT: EMC Corp.

Mark Fredrickson

Rick Lacroix

508/435-1000