Around The Block Blog
by Greg Folsom, Senior Vice President, Information Technology Director, Arnold Worldwide — February 22, 2011
Arnold Worldwide is a global communications company delivering services across all communication touchpoints – advertising, digital, promotions, direct, design and branded content. We’re proud to represent a diverse portfolio of worldwide brands, and we’ve been a Dell shop for as long as I can remember. We have always relied on Dell servers to host critical applications the agency and our clients depend on.
In the advertising business, creative workloads often change dramatically. Projects and campaigns come and go but leave behind an enormous electronic trail. Five years ago, I recognized that our legacy SAN couldn’t keep up with the massive data files we were generating and the system offered zero scalability. To cut costs and keep up with our competitors, we were forced to look for a better solution.
After evaluating and considering a number of options, we chose the Compellent solution because we knew it would work great with the VMware virtual servers we were going to run on Dell. Once implemented, we saw immediate results due to the SAN’s persistent architecture and intuitive technology. We eliminated 80 percent of our hardware and consolidated down to four physical servers. With rack space at a premium and energy costs on the rise, it pays to virtualize. With our data center running on Compellent and Dell, we did that easily.
We’ve also greatly improved our ability to withstand data disasters that might occur. For example, I remember a time soon after we installed the Compellent SAN—we were doing some system maintenance, and someone accidentally deleted a bunch of digital images. However, we had the volume backed up with a Compellent snapshot, so it just took us a few minutes to roll back in time to before the images were deleted. That’s another benefit of virtualization that people don’t really think about. Fortunately, we’ve done all this while keeping capital and operating expenditures low so we can focus our efforts on what we do best—deliver the right IT services to support the creative marketing and advertising campaigns of our clients around the world.
We’re still totally satisfied with our decision to switch to Compellent. Due to budget cutbacks in recent years, the advertising industry has been forced to look for ways to do more with less. But our bet on cutting-edge storage and server virtualization has enabled us to stay ahead of the competition. Dell’s acquisition of Compellent validates the critical decision we made five years ago, and our faith in the two companies has never been stronger. We look forward to seeing the two companies flourish and continue to create innovative IT offerings for many businesses, not just ours.
Editor’s Note: Greg Folsom is the CIO of Arnold Worldwide, and a Compellent and Dell customer. To learn more about Arnold Worldwide, its use of Compellent Fluid Data storage and its annual cost-savings, read the case study.
by Eric Nied, Information Technology Director, Radiology Ltd. — February 22, 2011
As a dedicated provider of professional, quality and technologically advanced imaging services, Radiology Ltd. requires technology that lives up to our stringent standards. Our nine different locations offer a range of services including body imaging, breast imaging and intervention and cardiac radiology, so it’s important we have a reliable storage system in place. Patient records not only need to be available 24/7 for short-term needs, they also often need to be available for the entire lifetime of the patient and sometimes longer. Dell and Compellent provide that kind of reliable technology for us.
When we began using a Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS) in 1998, EMC was really our only choice to manage the data-rich imaging files. We were a medium business storing at enterprise level. Our IT department was calculating a potential 4-5 TB of storage needed per year, and we were being forced to buy EMC hardware at a premium cost. While we were happy with our Dell servers, we needed a storage solution that could accommodate our storage growth while ensuring that we could access our images and records as quickly as possible to continue offering great patient care.
When it was time to invest in storage again, Compellent was the clear choice. Fluid Data allowed us to move 80 percent of our data onto less expensive lower-tier drives, saving us tens of thousands per year. Finally, we had a solution with enterprise-level storage at a price that was affordable for us. Attached to our Dell servers, Compellent has provided us with a reliable and easy-to-manage solution, and the two companies have helped us to stay competitive with other imaging service providers.
Dell’s acquisition of Compellent is a great opportunity for both companies and their customers. Compellent will reap the benefits of more dollars behind research and development, which will put new features and capabilities on the fast track for customers. For Dell, adding Compellent to its portfolio along with their EqualLogic offering will create a strategy that covers all of the open storage market, especially mid-sized companies whose storage needs grow as fast as they do.
My team and I are excited to see what the future holds for Dell and Compellent.
Editor’s Note: Eric Nied is a Compellent and Dell customer. To learn more about Radiology Ltd, visit their website: (www.radltd.com).
by Sonia St. Charles, CEO and Founder, Davenport Group — February 22, 2011
Watch us grow! Dell’s acquisition of Compellent is now final and the engines are revving on multiple fronts for accelerated growth. Consolidation in the storage sector means rapid expansion of the Compellent product offering via the enhanced marketing and distribution capabilities available through Dell. Growth of Dell’s market share in the storage sector will also occur since the Compellent offering is a natural fit for the enterprise space. My company, Davenport Group, is also expecting to grow as a result of this merger. We have been partners with both Dell and Compellent since 2003 and offer just two storage solutions to our clients, EqualLogic and Compellent. This merger will combine the best of both worlds for our clients, the remarkable innovation and support of Compellent and the maturity, resources, and breadth, that is Dell.
From a business perspective, Dell should see significant growth of their market share in the storage sector from adding Compellent to their offering. The flexibility, power, and scalability of Compellent now provides Dell with a flagship storage product to further penetrate the data center. Compellent’s Storage Center is a perfect fit for the upper mid-market all the way to the enterprise space. Enterprise shops are where the real value of the Compellent product set quickly becomes obvious. As clients deal with hundreds of terabytes of data, Compellent’s ability to gain control at the block level provides the edge that IT professionals are seeking. Compellent’s Storage Center provides end-users the ability to gain control over their data, reduce the complexity, and truly manage their costs. The architecture is a masterful design that delivers the lowest cost per allocated terabyte while being extremely flexible. One of our clients called it “the Lego building blocks of storage,” which may not be the next marketing tagline but it certainly conveys the concept. Compellent’s core value speaks to the demanding needs in every data center, and Dell has the resources and commitment to ensure that Compellent’s innovation continues and that Copilot services only gets better.
Davenport Group has been evangelizing the message of Compellent for 7-plus years. Often we encounter very talented IT professionals who, after a whiteboard session with a member of our team say, “You can’t do that!” Our response is always the same, “Let me show you.” Once the underlying magic of Compellent is properly conveyed, the IT professional is hooked. Davenport Group has prospered on our ability to convey the Compellent message and that was back when people said, “Compellent who?” Now with Dell’s resources and their commitment to the channel, we expect Storage Center to become the biggest selling SAN of all time. It is a bold claim but once people understand Compellent’s capabilities, the growth will occur. Look out world, here comes Compellent!