in Auckland, New Zealand, Rakon Selected IBM Storwize V7000 SAN

IBM Storage announced that Rakon Limited has selected the IBM Storwize V7000
SAN as part of a storage upgrade to meet the needs of its rapidly
expanding international quartz crystal manufacturing business.

The storage upgrade will be carried out with virtually no disruption to
production, and follows the opening of a joint venture factory in China
which adds to the demands on Rakon’s New Zealand-based central IT systems.

Rakon is recognised produces crystal oscillators for the
telecommunications, GPS, defence and aeronautics industries. Manufactured by
the tens of millions, every oscillator is tested before being shipped. The test
data, along with the manufacturing, financial and other administrative records
of Rakon’s global operations, is held in the SAN at its Auckland head office.

The increase in production when the new factory in Chengdu, southwest China,
came on-stream in July 2011 put extra pressure Rakon’s head office IT systems
including SAP, CRM and email systems. At the same time, the two existing IBM
DS4700s were coming off their support contract.

After a competitive pricing analysis, Rakon chose the IBM V7000 mid range disc
system to accommodate an increase in its storage needs. The combination of the
‘easy tier’ dynamic disk configuration, SSDs and fast 450GB HDDs, improves performance with a data access speed boost
of 60% to 100%. Storage capacity is vastly increased while the necessary rack
space is cut by two thirds, reducing power and cooling costs. Redundancy
provisions are also increased.

The storage migration will be managed in-house, with peer review provided by
IBM. A ‘live migration’ of data was made possible by the IBM V7000’s
virtualisation capability, so there is virtually no disruption to production.

"The expansion of our international
operations required us to review critical parts of our IT infrastructure,
including storage," says Paul Conroy, IS Manager at Rakon. "The IBM V7000 stacked up competitively on
all our cost and technology criteria. The ability to migrate without
significant disruption to production was a key factor in selecting the IBM
V7000."

"As a high growth firm entering
multiple offshore markets, Rakon has to be 100% confident it has scalable and
robust systems in place locally to support employees, partners and customers
throughout the world," says Matt Patterson, New Zealand Manager, IBM
Systems & Technology Group. "The
virtualisation capabilities of the IBM V7000 are perfect for organisations such
as Rakon that require a live migration. This client project is a perfect
example of the benefits from IBM’s continued investment in mid-range systems."