Case Studies
Axonom Increases Productivity and Cuts Server Costs with Boot from SAN
Overview
Axonom is a CRM Mid-Market focused company, providing Microsoft-based solutions to the high-tech manufacturing, financial services and not-for-profit industries. As one of the longest running Gold Certified Microsoft ISV partners, Axonom relies heavily on technology to maximize internal operational efficiency and maintain their competitive advantage. Axonom supports a North American and worldwide customer base.
Situation
Developing, testing and debugging CRM software solutions is a time and performance intensive process. Axonom typically dedicates three to five high performance systems to each developer to ensure they have the horsepower they need. But continually rebuilding servers that would crash under the pressure of testing various software applications and operating system combinations was a full time job for two IT administrators. Axonom needed a high-performance, centralized storage solution with Boot from SAN capabilities and instant recoverability to speed their software development and testing.
Solution
Storage Center has allowed Axonom to focus on its core business of software development and testing instead of on rebuilding servers and managing storage. Storage Center’s advanced Boot from SAN capabilities in combination with Data Instant Replay have allowed Axonom to maximize their internal operational efficiency, saving thousands of man hours every year.
Axonom Lowers Server Costs and Increases Developer Productivity: Compellent's Boot from SAN capabilities allow Axonom to test a Netware server pack in the morning
300 Percent Performance Increase
For technology companies, especially in the software development arena, speed is everything. All systems need to run as fast as possible to ensure software compiles and builds run quickly. Storage Center’s unique multi-threaded read ahead capabilities and mirrored write cache help to deliver an impressive performance advantage for Axonom.
“Storage Center has allowed us to dramatically increase the speed of bringing new products to market,” noted Dircz. “Certain processes such as compiling and database operations run 200 to 300 percent faster, further increasing our productivity.
25 Percent Increase in Per-Person Productivity
Storage Center’s easy to use Boot from SAN technology allows Axonom developers to reboot their test servers from a centralized boot image stored on the SAN. Software testers can easily isolate operating systems from applications and no longer have to pull out DVDs to rebuild the operating system.
With Data Instant Replay, Axonom’s developers can revert back to a clean or original volume within 10 seconds using an intuitive point-and-click interface. This is an extremely valuable tool in an environment where data is continually destroyed or corrupted by the testing systems. Data Instant Replay allows developers to easily roll back and forth between points in time, identifying interoperability problems, applying software patches and debugging software code without requiring individual engineers to re-boot, re-set or rebuild their test servers. This has increased productivity in their development group by 25 percent.
Lower Server Costs, Easier Manageability
Centralized boot images and Storage Center’s wizard-based set up and recovery make managing storage easier. Axonom hasn’t had to dedicate significant time to learn how to manage the system. Additionally, Storage Center works with all OS’s, allowing Axonom to test combinations of operating systems and applications they couldn’t test before, increasing quality assurance.
With a centralized boot image on the SAN, Axonom can quickly and cost-effectively add new diskless servers into production, lowering the overall cost of servers and server maintenance. This centralized storage allows Axonom to dedicate server budget to faster machines, increasing RAM and memory instead of purchasing internal storage. By removing the storage requirements from servers, Axonom is saving $800 per server. With five servers dedicated to every developer, this represents a significant cost savings as Axonom’s business continues to grow.