Sacramento County Turns to NetApp

Sacramento County, home to nearly 1.4 million
residents and the state’s capital, is a leader in leveraging
information technology to deliver citizen services.

The Sacramento County Office of
Communications & Information Technology (OCIT) is the centralized IT and
telecommunications service provider, enabling county workers to access the
information and data they need to respond to
resident requests. But, like other counties throughout the state, Sacramento County is faced with budget constraints
that put an increased focus on maximizing existing resources. To enhance its
ability to deliver these services, OCIT built its infrastructure on a NetApp, Inc. foundation, increasing overall IT
efficiency and flexibility while lowering costs.

OCIT’s previous storage environment
was made up of disparate systems, which created numerous inefficiencies,
limited its ability to quickly back up data, and redirected resources away from
strategic IT projects. Furthermore, OCIT needed a cost-effective way to back up
its virtualized servers and quickly restore them in the event of a server
failure. To address these challenges and free up resources and money to invest
in other services, OCIT worked with NetApp reseller Applied Computer
Solutions (ACS) to transition to a NetApp unified storage infrastructure.

NetApp’s deduplication and thin-provisioning technologies helped OCIT
increase storage efficiency by reducing storage space requirements
within its Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server applications by
up to 80%.

NetApp solutions for virtual environments have helped OCIT reduce server
operational expenses by 50%. For example, NetApp SnapMirror has eliminated the
need to find budget for additional storage while NetApp Snap Manager for
Virtual Infrastructure enables OCIT to restore virtual machines in 10 minutes
rather than the several hours it used to take, freeing up resources to focus on
other innovative projects.

To comply with requests through the Public Records Act, OCIT is often
required to produce employee e-mail from previous months. This would normally
take up to 24 hours to retrieve but now can be done in just 2 hours, thanks to
NetApp SnapManager for Microsoft Exchange, which integrates tightly with Microsoft
technology.

Additionally, SnapManager for Microsoft Exchange enables OCIT to perform
e-mail backups every 2 hours throughout the day, reducing the time it takes to
recover an inbox or single e-mail from 6 hours to less than 10 minutes. With
SnapManager software, OCIT is also able to backup its enterprise content
management application, which stores vital county records, such as birth
certificates, in seconds rather than the 48 to 72 hours it used to take. The
increased efficiencies have led to improved workforce productivity and
responsiveness. The 1.5 full-time OCIT employees previously dedicated to
monitoring backups can now focus on other business-critical functions.

David Villanueva, Interim Chief
Information Officer for the Sacramento County Office of Communications &
Information Technology said: "By
making it faster to retrieve vital citizen and government records, NetApp
storage is markedly improving the efficiency of OCIT. It has also allowed
valuable staff to turn their efforts to other important and strategic projects,
ultimately enhancing their productivity while still lowering county costs."

Regina Kunkle, Vice President of
State and Local Government and Higher Education (SLED), NetApp said: "NetApp is focused on working with our state
and local government customers to provide them with the storage solutions they
need to thrive in today’s demanding IT environment. OCIT is a great example of
how the right storage platform can provide the necessary IT efficiency and
flexibility to enable counties to deliver the services its citizens require
while reducing overall costs and expenditures."