Northstar Trade Finance Opts for EMC VNXe

EMC Corporation announced
that Northstar Trade Finance, Inc., a provider of financing to small and
mid-size Canadian exporters, selected EMC VNXe unified storage over Dell, HP
and IBM to run its 90% virtualized server infrastructure running on VMware
virtualization and cloud infrastructure technologies.

The VNXe has boosted both
performance and availability for the company’s critical transactional,
financial and customer-facing applications including SQL, while greatly
simplifying IT administration-with no compromise.

Customer Benefits:

• Performance: EMC VNXe performs 4X faster than Northstar’s
  previous HP storage solution, enabling more responsive service to customers.
• Efficiency: Thin provisioning helps Northstar
  optimize storage utilization without compromising performance or capacity; integration with VMware virtualization and cloud infrastructure technologies
  enables Northstar to create virtual machines in minutes versus hours to
  smoothly support growing business needs.
• Simplified Management: Built-in wizards on the VNXe shave
  hours off of daily system management, improving IT productivity and freeing
  time for more strategic projects.

Customer Challenges and Solution
Northstar was moving along with an aggressive plan to
virtualize its core business applications. Its existing storage system
struggled to perform within the virtualized environment and could not keep pace
with ever-growing data requirements. Northstar’s IT infrastructure had also run
out of storage capacity and could no longer support the addition of the
lightest weight applications. As a result, Northstar’s sole IT administrator
faced a time-consuming and complex process to provision applications and manage
the virtual environment.

After evaluating other vendors, Northstar selected
EMC VNXe unified storage to
support its critical business applications, including Microsoft Exchange email,
Microsoft SQL Server databases and Sage ERP Accpac business management. Northstar
also utilizes EMC Unisphere for integrated management of both storage assets
and the VMware virtual environment.

Pardave Lehry, Technical Analyst, Northstar Trade Finance
Inc. said: "We looked at Dell, HP, IBM and EMC.
The VNXe was clearly the best choice for our needs. It met our requirements for
top simplicity and efficiency. We also liked that the VNXe was affordable, more
innovative and offered a simpler management interface than the other solutions."

"The VNXe was
remarkably simple to set up. The wizards take all the guesswork out of
configuring the system. I just plugged in the VNXe, hooked up a laptop and had
it running in 30-minutes. It was that simple."

"The integration
between VNXe and VMware technologies really simplified creating and managing virtual
machines. With HP or Dell, creating a new virtual machine was confusing and
would have taken four hours of working with different tools to provision the
storage. With EMC Unisphere and VMware vCenter Server, I can create a new
virtual machine in less than 20-minutes."

"I am blown away
by how fast VNXe moves data. I had provisioned an 80-gigabyte virtual machine
for a SQL Server application and expected the data migration to take a few
hours. But it was done in three-minutes. It was amazing. Generally, I’m seeing
performance on the VNXe that’s 4X faster than our old HP system. With gains
like these, we’re able to execute transactions more quickly and deliver more
responsive service to our customers."

"Our customer and
financial data is critical to our operations. VNXe makes my job easier because
I don’t have to worry about downtime or other disruptions to the business. The
built-in redundancy and high availability features eliminate single points of
failure. And with thin provisioning on the VNXe, I can maximize storage
utilization and performance without my prior concerns about running out of
storage."

"EMC’s VNXe is
optimized for VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure). As our business continues
to expand, we plan to move additional VDI applications into our smaller offices
and they will all be supported by VNXe."

"I definitely
recommend EMC and EMC VNXe to others. It’s simple, efficient and affordable.
The level of customer service I’ve received from EMC has been phenomenal. The
entire sales process was the smoothest I’ve experienced. It’s true that people
make the organization and my account team is the prime reason why I will
continue to recommend EMC products in the future."