ESP Associates Selected Imation Nexsan NST Hybrid Storage Systems

ESP Associates, P.A. (ESP) selected Imation Corp.’s Nexsan NST hybrid storage systems and since deployment a little more than a year ago, it has seen business and operational efficiency improvements.

ESP Associates has been providing a range of services since 1986 that include surveying, civil engineering, planning, earth and materials sciences and water resources services. Its capacity and diversity of services are a benefit and value to its clients; providing multiple services with in-house staff improves communication and efficiency, which provides timely responses to both design and construction issues. The company is headquartered in Fort Mill, SC and has multiple offices throughout the eastern United States.

Problem Overview:

• Needed performance/speed to support high volume of high-resolution images and large data files.
• Required reliable infrastructure that could be scaled.
• Scale usable capacity from around 40TB to more than 300TB while enabling more capacity additions.
• Unlock all of these features and capabilities within their budget.
  

Solution:

• Nexsan NST hybrid storage systems were the best fit; already the system has scaled from 40TB to nearly 200TB.
  

Results:

• Job completion at least five to eight times faster, delivering exponential gains in workflow efficiency and staff productivity.
• A company-wide storage performance boost of about 65%.
• Better support for operations and storage management across geographies.
• No downtime – 100% uptime – since deployment.
• Corporate growth – 40% more staff and six new satellite offices within the first year of deployment.
  

Challenge

ESP’s business has been booming with year over year growth rates of 40%. They needed a storage infrastructure to support this exponential data growth and capitalize on growth opportunities. They evaluated several solutions and selected Imation’s Nexsan NST hybrid storage systems. Since deployment a little more than a year ago, ESP has seen remarkable business and operational efficiency improvements – gains that they attribute to Imation storage.

Due to the nature of their business, ESP has experienced recent exponential data growth; new technologies and regulations have created more high-resolution images, files and other data that the company needs to store and keep secure. Not long ago the company stored between 20TB and 40TB on 5-10 various NAS devices. In addition, ESP’s IT user base has grown about 40% in the last year. As data and user growth has continued, it became necessary to upgrade their IT infrastructure to a central storage system that could be housed at the corporate office and inter-operate with ten satellite offices.

ESP needed a storage infrastructure with:

• Speed: The company’s operations include the sending and receiving of a high volume of high-resolution images and large data files, so the IT infrastructure needed to enable that without slowing operations down.
• Reliability: Uptime is essential to ESP’s operations, and its infrastructure needs to operate without downtime – especially as the infrastructure grows to store many times more data than it did at deployment.
• Capacity and Scalability: The company needed to scale its usable capacity from around 40TB to more than 300TB. It also needed to enable further capacity additions to accommodate more data and user growth.
• Low TCO: ESP needed to unlock all of these features and capabilities and fit their budget.
  

Richard Marazza, IT manager, ESP Associates, P.A., said: “The Nexsan storage from Imation is easy to use, easy to engineer, the support is great, and overall it’s an easy and reliable storage solution. We deployed our solution a little more than a year ago, and we haven’t looked back…I could not be happier.”

Solution: Nexsan NST Hybrid Storage
ESP evaluated solutions from several vendors in a thorough review process, and decided that Nexsan NST hybrid storage systems were the best fit for their needs. ESP has a Nexsan NST hybrid storage system deployed and running in ESP’s IT environment, providing a total of 300TB of capacity; already the system has scaled from storing ESP’s initial 40TB of data to nearly 200TB.

Results: ROI

• Jobs are being completed at least five to eight times faster than with the old storage infrastructure, meaning exponential gains in workflow efficiency and staff productivity. For example, in a typical scenario at ESP, the scanning department brings in data from the field, downloads it into its storage system and then manipulates it with software. It used to take 3-4 technicians a week or more to complete this process, but now it takes only one day.
• ESP has realized a company-wide storage performance boost of about 65%.
• ESP’s new centralized infrastructure supports operations across geographies much better, and has made the management of ESP’s storage much simpler and easier.
• There has been no downtime – 100% uptime – since deployment.
• The operational efficiency has led directly to ESP’s growth. The company added 40% more staff within the first year of deploying its new storage solution, and it opened six new satellite offices in strategic growth markets around the US.
  

With the success of its centralized infrastructure, ESP is exploring expanding their Nexsan storage to potentially include remote offices that replicate their data back to the main HQs for DR.