Businesses Increasingly Prefer Dell EMC Storage Systems

Business Wire, April 2, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 2, 2003

Return On Investment (ROI) Drives Demand For Dell EMC

Standards-based Storage Solutions in Europe, Middle East and

Africa (EMEA)

Customers throughout EMEA have realized the performance, value and cost advantages of Dell EMC storage area network (SAN) systems.

Since the relationship was initiated in October 2001, more than 500 customers throughout EMEA have chosen Dell EMC SAN systems to meet their business-critical data storage needs including: Mercedes-Benz Customer Assistance Centre (Netherlands); The Ordnance Survey (Ireland); North Tipperary County Council (Ireland); Dedigate (Belgium); and Luton Borough Council (UK). For these diverse organizations, the key measurement of success was ROI.

"In the current economic climate ROI means a lot of return on little investment. IT organizations need to select storage vendors based on a combination of price, management and the ability to maintain storage service level agreements," said Philip Dawson, program director, META Group.

"Applying our world-class manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies drives down total cost of ownership (TCO), which makes managing a Dell EMC solution a reality for organizations of all sizes, across all industries," said Walid Moneimne, vice president, enterprise systems group, Dell EMEA. "When we announced our partnership with EMC over a year ago, we were confident that we would be able to offer a complete portfolio of products and services. These customers demonstrate the growing demand for the Dell EMC offering in EMEA."

Dell EMC Drives Mercedes-Benz Customer Assistance Centre (MBCAC)

When the time came to replace its storage infrastructure, Maastricht-based MBCAC chose a Dell EMC system that integrated easily into the existing IT infrastructure while providing the availability needed to support 24/7 service. The MBCAC Centre provides services and support to Mercedes-Benz drivers throughout Europe. The Centre processes one million contacts per year, from troubled drivers and customers enquiring about Mercedes-Benz products and services.

Following consultation with Dell, MBCAC deployed a SAN cluster that included Dell EMC storage arrays and management software, two Dell PowerEdge(tm) 8450 servers for database support, and additional servers to support other applications. A Dell PowerVault(tm) 136T tape library was used to continuously back up data.

Thors Tielemans, CEO, MBCAC, N.V said, "Dell advised us to use Dell EMC for the solution -- perhaps the Mercedes-Benz of storage media. To us, this confirmed that Dell maintains the same high quality standards that we do."

Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) Selects Dell EMC Solution

As part of an initiative to make survey information available online, OSi implemented a Dell EMC storage system that supports six terabytes (TB) of data. The system, which has delivered administration and management efficiencies, stores online maps and aerial photographs of Ireland.

Commenting on the deployment, Cormac Clancy, IT manager with Ordnance Survey Ireland said, "The Dell EMC system was specifically designed with TCO in mind and this has enabled OSi to meet the goal of delivering an online national archive of maps directly to our customers."

North Tipperary County Council Votes for Dell EMC

North Tipperary County Council is committed to improving the quality of the economic, social and cultural life of its 60,000 citizens by the provision of services appropriate to Local Government. The County Council wanted to provide an information-centric infrastructure through a low-cost solution that could be built and expanded to accommodate future business demands.

Dell was responsible for both installation and configuration of a Dell EMC storage array and was central to getting the system up-and-running quickly. In addition, the council deployed Dell PowerEdge servers to power business management applications and meet its extensive intranet and extranet requirements. The contract also includes three years of Dell Premier Gold Enterprise support.

The performance and value of Dell's industry-standard systems were key considerations by North Tipperary County Council. Most significant was Dell's Premier Gold Enterprise support which includes an assigned technical account management team, four-hour response, engineer-to-engineer access and remote monitoring.

Ger Lynch, head of information systems, North Tipperary County Council said, "Cost, product quality and reliable post sales support were all key factors in our decision-making process to find the right IT partner for us. The Dell EMC solution was designed specifically with scalability, flexibility and TCO in mind, and allows us to efficiently manage the ever-growing volume of information that has become central to the work we carry out."

Dedigate Strikes Gold with Dell EMC

Dedigate, based in Belgium, is a pioneer in delivering managed, dedicated hosting services to large enterprise customers, e-commerce marketplaces, system integrators, application service providers and web designers across a broad range of industries. When Dedigate won a contract to create and manage the IT infrastructure for the Quadrem e-marketplace -- the biggest worldwide electronic trading floor for buyers and sellers in the mining, minerals and metals industries -- it needed a high-performance, reliable infrastructure that was cost-effective to deploy, easy to manage and offered future investment protection.