United States Executive Department Customer Case Study

Challenge

The US Federal Government spends more than $90 billion annually on information technology. With ever increasing pressure from shrinking budgets and Presidential Executive Orders, the executive department has been challenged to dramatically consolidate and transform its information technology infrastructure to meet the mandated cost reductions. In order to maintain system integrity while meeting budgetary constraints, the customer needed to consolidate data centers, reorganize or merge various IT functions, and enable shared use of IT solutions and collateral.

As a result of multiple reorganization and consolidation efforts the executive department inherited four different backup applications and a sprawling storage infrastructure supporting that capability. The department’s customers needed better accountability, reporting and performance. The leadership demanded cost savings and a scalable, simplified architecture.

Solution

In response to an open Request For Proposal (RFP), CASarchitected an environment using IBM Spectrum Protect as the data protection foundation. To provide scalability and ease of use, Spectrum Protect Large Blue Prints and IBM Cloud Object Storage for offsite data copies and long data retention were added to the environment.

CAS utilized dsmISI MAGS as a much faster and more efficient means to protect NAS and, since it connects through the NAS shares, this utility is future-proofed to be compatible with replacement NAS systems as the department lifecycles their existing machines. FrontSafe Cloud Portal was implemented giving the department’s customers regular reports and a self-service option.

As a result of this solution, the department will realize a savings in power, cooling, floor space consumption, and fibre channel port consumption all while recovering various data center resources acquired during their previous reorganization efforts. By consolidating their data protection infrastructure, the department will not only make it easier to manage their system licensing and support, but also save itself many hours in routine management and upkeep.

CAS brought simplicity and efficiency for data protection with a proposed architecture that consolidated the department’s environment by introducing IBM’s Spectrum Protect blueprints and utilizing IBM Cloud Object Storage for off-site protection and long-term retention.

Results

CAS and IBM built a scalable architecture to consolidate all workloads. Using complimentary products such as dsmISI MAGS and FrontSafe Cloud Portal, the team was able to provide an agnostic means to tackle any size NAS backup, provide consolidated reporting and self-service capabilities.