Data Transfer Solutions Chooses Nexan E5310 NAS

Nexsan Corporation announced that Data Transfer Solutions (DTS) has selected the Nexsan E5310 NAS storage system to securely integrate data from mobile data collection units into its storage environment, thus solving productivity, security and management issues.

A member of the Nexsan Flexible Storage Platform, the E5310 has provided the federally recognized small business with the storage density needed at a cost within budget.

"We really had two issues. The first was increasing organizational productivity by consolidating our storage environment. The second was getting maximum TBs (terabytes) per dollar in a redundant configuration," noted Ryan Francoforte, an asset management Project Manager with Data Transfer Solutions. "We really liked the features, ease-of-use and cost-effectiveness of the Nexsan E5310 NAS storage system and selected it for our environment."

DTS is in asset management, geographic information systems (GIS) and software development, and transportation planning/engineering. The DTS team helps organizations digitize their worlds, improving efficiency and agility in the competitive global marketplace. It provides mapping applications for desktops, tablets and smart phones; helps assess, manage and improve physical infrastructure assets, including pavement and other above-ground features; custom-creates end-to-end transportation solutions for the transportation industry and municipal planners and more. With its fleet of Mobile Asset Collection vehicles, the company collects and integrates data from multiple sources, including digital imagery, pavement scanners and LiDAR scanners.

Bringing Mobile Data into the Fold
It was the need to better support and manage its Mobile Asset Collection (MAC) services that prompted DTS to seek a new storage system. The company maintains a fleet of vehicles, each equipped with cameras, GPS and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technologies and laser pavement scanning systems that collect information about infrastructure and pavement condition. DTS makes the vehicles available to state and local governments, public agencies and private entities that maintain infrastructure assets, collecting raw data and processing it into usable GIS-enabled data. Asset, condition and GIS information is then extracted from the processed data utilizing its own custom software. The result is a digital inventory of asset data fully integrated with GIS that asset managers can leverage for planning, increased efficiencies and cost savings.

"The data, both raw and processed, take up huge amounts of space," Francoforte commented.

Doug Cole, owner of DTS’ longtime partner and VAR, LH Computer Services, recommended Nexsan’s E5310 system to solve the company’s data management issues. "We knew the Nexsan system would provide DTS with powerful centralized storage featuring a full range of capabilities that was competitively priced," Cole recalled.

Before turning to the Nexsan system, however, DTS management decided to evaluate a number of systems from Nexsan competitors. But other disk arrays proved either too expensive, unreliable or lacking options critical to DTS’ operations. The Nexsan system required little configuration and maintenance and has provided reliable access to the company’s data since day one. This has allowed the MAC team to gather data into a single repository, leading to more effective management.

"DTS is one more instance of Nexsan systems outpacing competitors in terms of critical features, reliability and efficiency – all the issues important to companies in our market space," concluded Victoria Grey, SVP, Marketing for Nexsan.