Ibm's Shark Powers Storage Solution For Pacific Data - Company Business and Marketing

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Oct 16, 2000

Newly formed information service provider Pacific Data Technology Inc. reeled in a winning data management and growth strategy by choosing an IBM storage system with a "Shark" Enterprise Storage Server as its centerpiece.

In today's fast-moving real estate market, providing access to changing property roll information on the Internet is a competitive advantage. Pacific Data, a subsidiary of Tyler Technologies, Inc. in Dallas Texas, administers one of the largest online real estate property databases, monitoring more than 65 million land parcels from 226 counties surrounding major metropolitan areas of the United States. Pacific Data's core business is to transform vast amounts of raw data into usable business intelligence for mortgage brokers, lenders, direct marketing companies and real estate brokers throughout the country.

After evaluating a competitive offer from EMC, Pacific Data instead accepted a proposal from solutions provider and integrator, REAL Solutions, to replace its locally attached disk storage with a 2.5 terabyte (TB) "Shark" and Magstar 3590 Tape subsystem from IBM. According to Pacific Data's Chief Technology Officer, Gene Berger, the decision to go with IBM was based not only on the superior technology of its disk and tape products, but also on support and service.

"We evaluated both EMC and IBM, and went with the Shark because IBM provided the best total picture -- from performance to service," said Berger. "And the Magstar Tape Library provided us with the price point and speed that EMC doesn't offer."

Pacific Data's decision to choose IBM for its service and support is echoed in a report on Storage Services by IDC (May 2000), which found that customers are looking for storage-related services as their demands for more storage capacity and faster access increase. Customers are also looking for assurances that their systems will be available on a 24x7 basis, according to IDC, which identified IBM as the industry leader in storage services revenues.

Underpinning Pacific Data's network is the IBM Shark, attached to a cluster of eight Windows NT servers running IBM's DB2 Extended Enterprise Edition (EEE) for 24x7 operation. Shark was selected for its reliability, availability, scalability and ability to connect easily to multiple platforms. Since installing IBM's Shark as the foundation of its production systems strategy, Pacific Data has enjoyed a 400 percent improvement in the speed of its applications.

The Shark Enterprise Storage Server is the high-performance disk storage solution from IBM, the world leader in storage systems, software, services and technology. Built on the foundation of IBM's Seascape Storage Enterprise Architecture, Shark works with Windows NT, UNIX, Novell NetWare, S/390 and AS/400 -- and with a variety of interfaces, including Fibre Channel, Ultra SCSI and ESCON. Shark incorporates IBM unique technology such as Parallel Access Volumes (PAV) currently unavailable in competing systems from EMC and Hitachi Data Systems.

REAL Solutions was established in early 1988 as REAL Applications, Ltd., the IBM computer systems subsidiary of El Camino Resources, Ltd., one of the world's leading information technology providers. Today, REAL Solutions is a dominant force in the IBM reseller marketplace, the leading provider of IBM high-end data storage solutions and a major presence in the AS/400 and RS/6000 markets.

Two European acquisitions, made by the parent company, are also part of the REAL organization. These businesses are Information Systems, GmbH (Germany) and Oak Brook International, Ltd. in the United Kingdom.