Simpson Strong-Tie Standardizes on Two Pillar Axiom

Simpson Strong-Tie, a company that
manufactures framing products that contribute to the strength and safety
of homes and other structures, decided to revamp its entire storage
system and standardize on the Pillar Axiom from Pillar
Data Systems. The move put the company on track to achieve its goal
to reach a 60 percent utilization rate – a 30 percent increase from its
prior HP systems.

 
The prior system was yielding only 42 percent utilization rate and was
still overloaded, hampering application performance. By increasing its
storage utilization, Simpson Strong-Tie lowered its overall storage
costs by 38 percent and saved $50,000 per year in support services
due to Pillar’s ease of use and simple management features.
 
This improved utilization, along with reliability and high-performance,
is critical for Simpson Strong-Tie which depends on its always-on
business. From production, shipping and field sales access to ERP, order
entry and customer support, all of the Simpson Strong-Tie key business
assets were traditionally housed on a direct-attached storage system
with nearly 2,000 employees using thin-client systems to access the
information. However, as business expanded across the company’s 35
worldwide locations, the IT system struggled to keep up with increasing
demands, which posed a significant threat to its need for a real-time
environment.
 
“When I heard about the Pillar Axiom and its 1TB SATA drives, I
couldn’t believe it,” said Eugene Alfaro, Global IT Operations
Manager, Simpson Strong-Tie. “With all the storage in a single
system, we don’t have to determine which drives go where. We just snap
them in and Pillar’s QoS lets us prioritize our data for the project at
hand. The flexibility to inject that type of intelligence into the
system allows us to focus on other things while our applications hum
along.”
 
After a rigorous evaluation of industry solutions – including those
offered by Pillar Data, NetApp and EMC – Simpson Strong-Tie selected
the Pillar Axiom because of its performance, reliability and Quality of
Service (QoS) features. Pillar’s patented storage QoS is the basis for
its Application-Aware capability that allows administrators to classify
data based on business priority. During the product evaluation, the
Axiom was able to manage high-priority data (databases and Exchange) vs.
low- and medium-priority (archive and file systems) all on the same
system. Because the lower priority data doesn’t compete with or steal
storage resources from high-priority data, Simpson Strong-Tie was able
to increase its utilization rates while also improving application
performance.
 
“It’s not just about capacity. It’s how you balance performance and
the way you use that capacity. When customers can improve application
performance while lowering costs, they achieve true business efficiency,”
said Bob Maness, Vice President, Worldwide Marketing and Channel Sales,
Pillar Data Systems. “That’s the philosophy behind Pillar’s
Application-Aware. And that is precisely why customers like Simpson
Strong-Tie are able to see an immediate impact on their bottom line
after they deploy the Axiom.”
 
The company purchased two Pillar Axiom systems for its principal data
center in Pleasanton, Calif., and a disaster recovery center in
McKinney, Tex., each with 20TB of capacity. The IT team also
manages an extensive archive of engineering data and drawings for all
products going back to the 1960s, as well as file systems and network
shares. With the Axiom now deployed, Alfaro’s team is looking forward to
shoring up its business-continuity strategy.