3PAR Utility Storage Chosen by TechSoup Global

3PAR announced that non-profit TechSoup Global has chosen 3PAR Utility Storage to lower their own IT costs while delivering an estimated $312 million in annualised IT savings to other non-profits in more than 190 countries.

Over the past two decades, TechSoup Global’s innovative programs have supported social benefits organisations on the international, national, and local level by helping them address unmet technology needs. With their entire donation program managed online through the TechSoup.org Website, the non-profit chose 3PAR Utility Storage to build a resilient, high-performance storage infrastructure that would enable future scalability while keeping costs to a minimum.
 
“The other platforms we looked at had serious drawbacks such as complex management interfaces, inability to stand by performance numbers, and lack of fully-developed thin provisioning capabilities,” said Tim Suttle, Director of Information Systems Infrastructure for TechSoup Global. “3PAR are the innovators of thin provisioning, and although other vendors are now trying to catch up, they just can’t match 3PAR.”
 
Each month, TechSoup.org serves more than 400,000 unique users, and with plans to extend the TechSoup Global Network into 60 countries by 2011, minimising IT costs is essential. TechSoup Global’s customers rely heavily on their online product philanthropy service called TechSoup Stock, where other nonprofits can access donated and discounted technology products provided by technology partners including Microsoft, Cisco, Symantec, Intuit, and Adobe. In order to ensure that TechSoup Global can meet these demands, the non-profit cannot afford to be held captive by a complex and inflexible infrastructure that limits the number of donations they can offer online. Instead, TechSoup Global requires an infrastructure that scales reliably and affordably to accommodate new donation programs while allowing the non-profit to simultaneously grow the network of organisations they serve.
 
“Being in the non-profit sector, cost is a factor we must constantly monitor, particularly in expanding our operations to reach a greater number of nonprofits,” said Suttle. “3PAR offered the only storage platform that allowed us to achieve cost savings not only in the short term, but also in the long run.”
 
To simplify their previous infrastructure, which relied on expensive and inefficient Direct Attached Storage, the global non-profit chose to purchase two 3PAR InServ E200 Storage Servers for their two datacentre locations. In building this new virtual infrastructure, TechSoup Global also chose to implement the 3cV blueprint, which combines 3PAR Utility Storage with products from HP and VMware to create a complete utility computing environment that has been proven to halve server, storage, and operational costs. With this virtual infrastructure, TechSoup Global has already experienced a 72% reduction in datacentre power consumption.
 
TechSoup Global selected 3PAR Utility Storage and the 3cV blueprint after measuring storage products from several vendors against criteria that included performance, ease of management, and ability to deliver on promised features. After integrating the 3cV blueprint, TechSoup.org is better able to offer other nonprofits a one-stop resource for technology needs through providing free information, resources, and support.
 
TechSoup Global’s 3PAR deployment also utilises several 3PAR software products that ease administration and capacity requirements through virtualisation and automation, including 3PAR Thin Provisioning, 3PAR Dynamic Optimisation, 3PAR Virtual Copy, and 3PAR Recovery Manager for Exchange. TechSoup Global’s decision to deploy 3PAR Utility Storage was strongly influenced by their evaluation of 3PAR Thin Provisioning, which allows the organisation to purchase capacity only for written data and to provision lifetime, application-tailored storage in 15 seconds with no preplanning.
 
“Because nonprofits are under such pressure to do more with less, it makes a great deal of sense to look at introducing more virtualisation and automation to their IT infrastructures,” said Tom Trainer, Senior Analyst at Analytico, Inc. “3PAR Utility Storage and the 3cV blueprint provide the agility, flexibility, and scalability required by a flourishing non-profit while also helping keep costs down."
 
“TechSoup Global’s utility storage deployment is proof positive that 3PAR saves organisations money while enabling them to extend finite and often very limited resources,” said David Scott, President and CEO for 3PAR. “Nonprofits cannot afford to invest in unproven technologies with unproven ROI. 3PAR delivers hardened, next-generation technologies that have not only been proven to deliver superior ROI, but that even the most cost-conscious organisations can afford to implement.”