Proact Signs NOK 5 Million Contract With Lyse in Norway

The Proact Group is supplying a storage and archiving infrastructure to the Lyse group.

These systems are based on Hitachi and are one of the first installations in Norway to switch seamlessly between redundant locations. This contract is worth around NOK 5 million.

Rogaland company Lyse is a national player in the fields of energy and telecommunications. With 900 employees and a turnover in excess of NOK 5 billion in 2010, the company has an important part to play in ensuring access to services critical to society for clients in both the private and the business market. When the company’s IT infrastructure was undergoing a major upgrade, there was a need to provide new information management solutions to guarantee the best storage and archiving.

"Our requirements are advanced, with strict demands in terms of technical functionality and advice. Proact was one of few suppliers that met all our needs and suggested the solution which provided us with the best overall economy. This solution is being phased in at the moment, and some elements of it have already been commissioned. Proact has provided us with a secure, solid partner right the way along the line, and we have also entered into a support and maintenance agreement," says Geir Arve Vika, Managing Director at Lyse IT.

"Lyse has an infrastructure which has to stay up. Hence there are very stringent demands in respect of uptime and redundancy. This is one of the biggest agreements concerning high-uptime information management this year, and of course we are extremely proud to have been selected. The first phases are also indicating that the introduction is going to plan, and we are starting to see results," says Eirik Pedersen, Managing Director for Proact in Norway.

The consignment comprises two Hitachi VSP and two AMS storage systems. Hitachi Command Suite is being used for administration. This provides a virtualised 3D platform that scales in both directions. Benefits will be seen in the form of performance, flexibility, energy consumption and costs. Stratified storage, storage recovery and dynamic stratification mean the need for hardware (disks) is reduced. A Hitachi Content Platform to be used for archiving is also being supplied.

"Good procedures and solutions for archiving are crucial for handling storage volumes. New needs and requirements mean that companies have to retain information for a long time, ensure that information remains intact, and not least that it can be brought back out of deep storage when the need arises. A good archiving solution will help to ensure that Lyse‚s information management procedures are much improved, and it will put much less pressure on the storage systems," says Pedersen.