Press Releases
3PAR Liberates UniquE Solutions Inc. From Storage Administration
Retail Services Leader Runs Business On Utility Storage
FREMONT, CA, US — August 11, 2003
3PAR®, the leading provider of Utility Storage, announced today that UniquE Solutions, the leading supplier of turnkey IT solutions for retail service agencies, has purchased and been running its business on the 3PAR InServ® Storage Server for several months now. UniquE Solutions, which supports over 2,500 field service representatives that are responsible for the in-store promotion and inventory management of large retailers like Lowe's and Toys R Us, chose the 3PAR solution to simplify its growing storage environment and ensure future scalability needs.
UniquE Solutions provides a broad range of services to retail service agencies and their field representatives, including remote signature and image capture, bar code scanning, call reporting, internal email, and expense reporting. UniquE's many services and a growing customer base caused the company to outgrow an increasingly complex storage environment. UniquE chose 3PAR Utility Storage to address this growth and to minimize management complexity.
"Before 3PAR, my storage administrator spent 50 to 70% of his time managing our storage — now ongoing administration only takes 5% or less of his time," stated Ben Mullis, Vice-President of IT at UniquE Solutions.
"We initially considered going with a midrange array from a brand leader, but chose 3PAR for better scalability, ease-of-use, speed, and TCO," added Tim Rich Jr., UniquE Solutions Network Administrator. "With 3PAR, we saved money immediately and were able to defer a $60,000 redundant switch purchase."
Simplicity and Cost-Effective Scalability
3PAR's ability to ensure future scalability, with no upfront price premiums, helped UniquE start with a small, cost-effective system that could expand massively as required. Each new customer contract has the potential to expand UniquE's storage capacity requirements unpredictably by as much as 10 terabytes at any time. UniquE was assured by 3PAR's ability to handle these unplanned jumps in capacity with ease.
UniquE also worried about excessive administration time and effort — a significant threat to profitability. 3PAR's ease of management eliminated these concerns by allowing UniquE to add new customers quickly without affecting availability for other customers, thus reducing time-to-revenue. With 3PAR, UniquE can add capacity, host connectivity and performance online — quickly and simply — so that IT staff can better spend its time addressing customer needs.
A Storage Platform to Build On
"More companies like UniquE are building their infrastructure on Utility Storage because it's the only way to cost-effectively meet the flexibility needs of today's IT environment", said Jamie Gruener, Senior Analyst, The Yankee Group. "In a business like UniquE Solutions where IT execution is tied so directly to revenue, it definitely pays to go with Utility Storage. It's a no-brainer."
With UniquE's entire revenue stream dependent upon 3PAR, always-on availability was also an important selection criterion. UniquE was impressed by 3PAR's responsive 24x7 customer service model, and its distinctive InSpire® Architecture with hardware and software fault tolerance which ensures the lowest levels of downtime.
"UniquE's success is an example for other customers who aren't satisfied with the status quo," said David Scott, President and CEO of 3PAR. "This is exactly what Utility Storage was designed to do — restore simplicity and cost-effectiveness to storage infrastructures."
UniquE Solutions has installed a 3PAR InServ S400 model equipped with 3PAR's InForm® Operating System, which delivers volume management and storage virtualization. UniquE also purchased Access Guard for LUN security and Full Copy, one of 3PAR's point-in-time copy solutions. Host servers are running Microsoft Windows and Linux. Applications include Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange and UniquE's in-house developed applications.
About UniquE Solutions, Inc.
UniquE Solutions Inc., with corporate headquarters in Anderson, SC and regional office in Wilkesboro, NC, offers a turnkey solution for retail service providers and vendors, including applications designed for mobile handheld devices for electronic call reporting, digital photography, bar code scanning, e-mail and other enterprise programs. Web site: http://www.unisolinc.com.
About 3PAR
3PAR® (NYSE: PAR) is the leading global provider of utility storage, a category of highly virtualized, tightly clustered, and dynamically tiered storage arrays built for utility computing. Organizations use utility computing to build cost-effective virtualized IT infrastructures for flexible workload consolidation. 3PAR Utility Storage gives customers an alternative to traditional arrays by delivering resilient infrastructure with increased agility at a lower total cost to meet their rapidly changing business needs. As a pioneer of thin provisioning — a green technology developed to address storage underutilization and inefficiencies — 3PAR offers products designed to minimize power consumption and promote environmental responsibility. With 3PAR, customers have reduced the costs of allocated storage capacity, administration, and SAN infrastructure while increasing adaptability and resiliency. 3PAR Utility Storage is built to meet the demands of open systems consolidation, integrated data lifecycle management, and performance-intensive applications. For more information, visit the 3PAR Website at: www.3PAR.com.
