Lake County Illinois Government Offices Deploys Nimbus Storage

Nimbus Data Systems, Inc. announced that the government offices for Lake County, IL, have deployed its Gemini all-flash arrays as the storage foundation for its VDI and to virtualize its business critical tax system.

Lake County is located on the shores of Lake Michigan between Chicago and Wisconsin. Home to more than 700,000 residents who live in both urban and rural communities, the Lake County government offices provide administration, judicial, health and other public services to individuals and businesses residing throughout the county’s 470 square miles. Already a technology progressive county, Lake County was looking to more efficiently manage its virtualized environment. After multiple failed attempts to accelerate its existing hard-disk based storage system, it identified that an all-flash system was a requirement.

There were four key factors that influenced Lake County’s selection of an all-flash storage system: intelligent flash management, high levels of availability and reliability, multi-protocol support, and scale-out architecture.

Lake County assessed storage systems from both well-known storage providers and start-up all-flash array providers.

“After performing an overall cost analysis between hybrid storage systems and all-flash arrays, we found they were virtually the same, but the dramatic performance gains of an all-flash system is what set them miles apart,” said John Clark, lead IT architect, Lake County. “When it came down to selecting the best all-flash array to meet our business needs, Nimbus Data’s Gemini system was a no-brainer. The Gemini array far exceeded the four key design factors we were looking for in a system, and more importantly, it eliminated wait times for accessing our county-wide tax system.“

Since making the change to Gemini all-flash arrays, Lake County is exploring additional business critical applications that can be virtualized using the system. Beyond virtualization, Lake County has brought in an additional Gemini array to host its Oracle ERP software as well as its Business Intelligence and Hyperion software.

Lake County plans to bring in a third array for database-centric applications.

“Lake County is a pioneer in deploying technology to efficiently manage the computing infrastructure of their government agencies,” said Thomas Isakovich, CEO and founder, Nimbus Data. “We love seeing customers from a variety of industries realize the true potential of our Gemini all-flash arrays. Lake County has proven the ROI of an all-flash environment, extending the benefits beyond the county’s IT department to the government offices using their business critical tax system.“