Billion Automobile Turns to Tegile Array

Tegile Systems, Inc., in primary storage de-duplication in virtualized server and desktop environments, announced that Billion Automobile, GMC’s fourth-largest U.S. dealership, has implemented Tegile’s Zebi Storage Array to serve its host of databases, file services, ADP data, as well as deliver strong performance for a positive experience to the company’s 500 virtual desktop users.

Billion Automobile is a large Midwest auto dealership with 16 locations in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. The family-owned company, which was founded in 1935, has 900 employees, 100 of them are delivering cars in the field, 800 located at dealerships. Five hundred employees are VDI clients. Billion Auto also operates one of the nation’s largest automobile website.

According to Kevin Hubert, manager of client development, IT Outlet, Inc., Sioux City, South Dakota, the reseller on the project, Billion Auto’s number one driver was pressure from its VDI users. "Sales people working in our lots were simply unable to do their job because performance was so slow on their client devices. It was directly impacting our ability to generate revenue. So the ability to improve performance for users was a key consideration. The company also wanted to address scalability in order to accommodate further aggressive growth when we move the datacenter to an offsite co-location facility."

In order to address its range of needs, Billion Automobile evaluated IBM’s V7000 but decided that Tegile Systems arrays were the best option for the company.

"Tegile’s Zebi array was the only hybrid array we saw with in-line de-duplication," said Hubert, "We knew that would work great with our VDI users. We ran a proof of concept with both IBM and Tegile and the Zebi array was a clear winner."

According to Billion Auto’s IT Manager, Tom Likely, "The in-line compression and de-duplication reduced the company’s capacity footprint by over 70% since the project came online last month. It is fast enough to support our virtualized server, VDI users and we are confident it will handle the two new databases coming over without a problem. Now we don’t worry about storage performance, we look at performance for about 15 minutes a day and are always pleased with the numbers we get. We don’t have to worry about the 500 people at the 16 dealerships unable to work anymore, everything just operates as advertised."

In addition, Billion Auto intends to consolidate all its applications onto its VMware server virtualization platform. "Big applications are next on the platform and will include the parts database, the body shop database and file sharing," said Tom Mulley, director of IT for Billion Auto.

"Billion Automobile is an excellent example of a company who was in a high-growth mode and had to quickly evolve it’s VDI technology to accommodate that growth," said Rob Commins, VP of marketing, Tegile. "Their users were experiencing challenges every single day. Billion Auto found it critical to achieve best-in-class performance, while handling scalability issues. By leveraging Tegile solutions Billion Auto believes it has achieved its goals and can now provide better service to its users and ultimately its customers."