Williams & Fudge Selects EMC

EMC Corp. announced
that Williams & Fudge, Inc., an accounts receivable management firm serving 1,200
colleges, universities and financial institutions, selected EMC VNX unified
storage and RecoverPoint to transform its business operations and
accelerate server and desktop virtualization.

With EMC and VMware virtualization and cloud infrastructure technologies, the
company has achieved business expansion, improved availability of applications
including SharePoint, SQL Server and VMware Zimbra email, and lowered hardware
and support costs while delivering new services to its internal clients.

Customer
Benefits:

• 
  Performance: More than 250 users are able
  to launch their virtual desktops 90% faster for PCs since Williams & Fudge
  implemented VNX with a FLASH 1st automated tiering strategy.
• Instantaneous Response: Since
  implementing VNX, it has achieved instantaneous response
  times for  SharePoint indexing and search functions while maintaining
  performance.
• Data Protection: Using RecoverPoint and VMware, it can migrate VMs to a DR site
  200 miles away in just 30 minutes, and has achieved 100% availability for its
  applications.
• Increased Efficiency: It has reduced potential hardware costs and supporting a
  200-employee headcount increase-all without additional IT staff.

Customer Challenges and Solution:
Williams & Fudge’s business was expanding as demand increased for
assistance with collecting receivables on college loans and other debt from
higher-education and financial institutions. The firm’s previous physical IT
infrastructure lacked sufficient scalability to handle the company’s growth. It
also required management resources, which was a drain on lean IT staff.

With the help of EMC premier Velocity
solution provider eGroup, Williams & Fudge selected VNX unified storage
to transform its business. VNX has enabled the firm to deliver new IT services,
such as the launch of a new business unit, to its internal clients. VNX
provides Williams & Fudge with a FLASH 1st automated tiering strategy that
leverages the EMC FAST Suite, along with flash and high-capacity HDDs.
VNX supports Williams & Fudge’s SharePoint, SQL Server, VMware Zimbra email
and custom-built Linux applications.

Williams & Fudge has virtualized 100%
of its server infrastructure with vSphere and has virtualized 260
desktops using VMware View. It relies on VMware vStorage API
for Array Integration (VAAI) and EMC VSI plug-ins for vCenter to streamline
integration between VNX and VMware, enabling faster provisioning and copying of
VMs, among other tasks.

For DR, Williams & Fudge uses RecoverPoint
continuous data protection and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to
replicate its virtualized infrastructures across two data centers located 200
miles apart.

Phillip Reynolds, data center director,
Williams & Fudge, said: "Our
company has more than doubled in size to 360 employees while our lean IT staff
of three employees has remained the same-something that wouldn’t have been
possible without EMC and VMware technology. As our company continues to
grow even two or three-fold we’re very comfortable that EMC and VMware
technology will enable our data center to scale with the business.

"We
took a very hard look at another storage vendor but determined it wasn’t going
to deliver the performance we needed for our intensive SharePoint and SQL
Server workloads and, in particular, our virtual desktop workload. Plus, it
didn’t have the streamlined integration with VMware that makes managing our
environment so easy. EMC was the clear choice for us and we are extremely happy
with how EMC has performed.

"We’ve
transformed into a proactive business, ready for whatever comes next. If a new
client project requires 50 additional staff members, we have the agility to
create up to 50 desktops in no time. For example, we supported the creation of
a new division with employees who move to new workspaces every few weeks and
need to log in to their desktops from different locations. By leveraging
technology as a business enabler, we can rapidly respond to dynamic needs and
deliver new services to attract clients.

"With
EMC VNX and the FAST Suite backing our virtualized desktop infrastructure,
we’re getting great performance-even when boot storms occur. It’s amazing-just
a little flash goes a long way. Our call center agents log into their virtual
desktops or reboot in only 30 seconds when it used to take five to 10 minutes
for PCs. And because they operate on commissions, enabling our agents to get to
work faster contributes to increased revenue for the company.

"SharePoint
is the hub of our business operations that connects thousands of documents with
our employees for filling out forms, submitting applications, and managing
accounts. With VNX and flash 1st, we’ve been able to deliver instantaneous
response times to SharePoint indexing and search functions. SharePoint
performance isn’t even affected when the infrastructure loads 250 virtual
desktops in 10 to 15 seconds. Unisphere comes with application-specific wizards
for SharePoint that make it easy to provision storage and perform other administrative
tasks.

"We
credit EMC and VMware with enabling significant cost savings. We have
decreasing potential hardware costs. The number of help desk calls and overall
IT support cost per user also has dropped substantially. Instead of patching
and maintaining hundreds of desktops and servers, we simply upgrade a few
golden images. Lastly, as a result of the excellent integration between EMC and
VMware solutions, we can add virtual desktops and machines, disk drives and
applications very quickly and easily.

"EMC’s
RecoverPoint is one of those technologies that actually lives up to everything
it is supposed to be. It has allowed our business to have peace of mind and to
have our data backed up off-site with very little time to get the data moved
over. The bandwidth reduction is phenomenal. We are doing this across a very
small pipe.

"RecoverPoint
and VMware SRM enable us to migrate all of our VMs from our primary data center
to another site 200 miles away in about 30 minutes. Because everything is
integrated and pre-scripted, we just press a button and it’s done. As a result
of having an agile cloud infrastructure, we have achieved 100% availability
with virtually zero RPO and RTO’s. I can sleep well at night knowing our data
is protected."