Matiq Chooses Proact and HDS

Matiq AS chooses Proact IT Norge AS and Hitachi Data Systems Corporation to implement cost-effective storage platform offering many functions.

The suppliers have confidence in the solution that they are providing a 100% uptime guarantee.

This contract has a budget of around NOK 6.5 million.

Matiq is a subsidiary of Nortura and supplies ICT solutions to the entire group. This spans business development and advisory services to operations and support. The company runs around 160 applications with 2,800 users in 40 locations all over Norway. As a result, they also have considerable data volumes to deal with. The company invited tenders earlier this year for systems to allow it to manage its data more effectively and deal with anticipated growth of 10% per year. The intention was to phase out a leased storage platform which was costly to run and replace it with an innovative system.

With Hitachi Unified Storage-VM, Nortura has a solution which allows all data to be managed and consolidated on a single virtualised platform. The functionality ensures that stability is maintained, internal processes are streamlined and IT services can be supplied quickly and effectively. Redundancy in the systems also ensures that they are always accessible, even during maintenance and upgrades. 9.6TB flash on both systems means that the most demanding applications can be run in memory, and business-critical content is supplied more efficiently.

“The solution from Hitachi and Proact gave us by far the most for our money. Our previous system became too expensive to run, and we needed new functionality which added more technical value and covered our future needs. We are now certain that we have the solution that manages our data most effectively, supplied by organisations with great reputations in the market,” says Stig Roar Schjølberg, team manager at the infrastructure department.

The solution is being phased in at present. With a little help from Proact and HDS with getting started, all data is now being migrated across from an earlier leased storage platform to the new system. Furthermore, Matiq has entered into a support and maintenance agreement with its supplier.

“This is an extremely important contract, and we have great expectations as far as this is concerned. We have extensive experience of assembling, supplying, supporting and managing platforms from Hitachi. We feel very secure in our guarantee, whereby we state that the system will always be accessible except in the case of factors beyond our control. At the same time, it is pleasing to see that our Trondheim office is continuing to supply our familiar quality to Central Norway’s most renowned organisations,” says Eirik Pedersen, MD, Proact. “Our close cooperation with HDS provides Matiq with a local supplier which is always available to provide the service, expertise and security demanded by such solutions. In all, this will provide a high level of technical value and a good return on the company’s investment.”

Proact holds top-level accreditation and is Norway’s only Authorised Service Provider for HDS ASP. This means that solutions supplied are supported throughout their service life by consultants both at home and abroad who have Europe’s skills in respect of HDS technology.