Mitsubishi Power Systems Boosts SAP Implementation

Nimbus Data Systems, Inc. announced that Mitsubishi Power Systems, Inc., in power generation solutions, has selected the Nimbus S-Class multiprotocol flash memory platform to accelerate its SAP deployment.

The Nimbus solution solved persistent performance challenges that had compromised Mitsubishi’s ERP deployment and delivered productivity gains that prior investments in high-end disk arrays had failed to do.

"The Nimbus S-Class system significantly increased performance in our SAP and SQL environment by relieving unacceptable IO bottlenecks that hampered our production ERP installation," stated Matt Wattles, enterprise infrastructure architect of Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas. "The S-Class delivers very low latency and rock-solid reliability that will continue to benefit our organization as we expand our infrastructure to include more IO-intensive database and virtualization solutions."

Mitsubishi Power Systems will rely on its new SAP ERP software for business-critical operations, project management, and manufacturing. While SAP software is widely deployed, 90% of respondents to a recent Gartner survey reported lost productivity and revenue due to performance issues. For Mitsubishi, the process of converting data from their existing ERP system to the new SAP SQL database was especially burdensome. Users of the ERP system also voiced concerns over lethargic performance, with long delays and slow screen updates when switching between various functions. Nightly SQL backups were also exceeding their allotted backup windows, reducing performance of production operations.

With Nimbus’ flash memory storage,
Mitsubishi Power Systems was able to:

• Reduce SAP SQL Server database load time from 4 hours to 1 hour, a 4x improvement
• Cut backup time from nearly two hours to 20 minutes, an 83% reduction
• Complete SAP SQL Server database backups well within allotted backup windows
• Increase end user adoption of the SAP system and improve end user satisfaction

"With this win, Nimbus has further demonstrated the benefits of flash memory technology and Nimbus’ multiprotocol, enterprise-grade solution in particular," stated Benjamin S. Woo, program VP of WW Storage Systems research at IDC. "Storage systems built around flash technology offer dramatically lower latency than conventional spinning disk arrays, as evidenced by the significant operational improvements that this customer was able to achieve with the Nimbus S-Class system. IDC believes that Nimbus is at the leading edge of flash-based storage systems, and we believe that customers should seriously consider flash memory solutions for their IO-sensitive enterprise applications."

The Nimbus S-Class flash memory system delivers performance to Mitsubishi’s SAP and SQL environment while also using 70% less rack space than prior disk arrays. According to Mitsubishi, Nimbus’ documentation was easy to follow, making deployment quick and easy.

"We are excited to support Mitsubishi Powers Systems’ SQL and SAP acceleration effort with our flash memory platform," stated Thomas Isakovich, CEO of Nimbus Data Systems. "As this win demonstrates, large organizations trust Nimbus technology for their most business-critical applications, transforming high-performance, high efficiency IT infrastructure into a significant competitive advantage."