TechnologyOne Selected NetApp

NetApp, Inc. announced that TechnologyOne Limited (TechOne) has implemented its Private Storage (NPS) on a FlexPod data centre platform with NetApp MetroCluster technology to help reduce costs and increase performance for its customers.

TechOne is Australia’s enterprise software company, with offices in six countries. The company’s software powers its diverse range of customers, which includes more than 1,000 corporations, government departments, financial institutions, universities, and statutory authorities around the world.

After the floods in Queensland in 2011 damaged TechOne’s data centre, the Brisbane- headquartered company decided to go all in with AWS to reduce risk. AWS did just that, allowing TechOne to have up to 99.9% resiliency. However, TechOne needed a storage solution that also provided the same levels of reliability and flexibility.

Because many of TechOne’s customers have seasonal workloads, for example, universities that have students registering for courses during the year, TechOne needed a storage solution that could react in real time. In addition, many of the company’s customers have their data accessed worldwide, so the company required an efficient solution for stored data.

“Data has really strong gravity, and once it’s stored somewhere, it’s hard to move around,” said Iain Rouse, group director of cloud, TechnologyOne. “With a global cloud and customers around the world, we turned to NetApp to solve this problem, as its Data Fabric approach enables our customers to interact with their data seamlessly.“

TechOne also wanted to adopt a multi-cloud approach without increasing costs or complexity, because its customers were beginning to demand alternate cloud solutions.

For these reasons, TechOne worked with NetApp to develop the TechnologyOne MetroPod, a combination of technologies including NetApp Private Storage for Cloud, FlexPod, and MetroCluster, hosted within Equinix‘s data centre. ONTAP Cloud software and NetApp OnCommand Insight enable TechOne’s multicloud approach and efficiencies in the cloud. The solution is specific to TechOne’s requirements, strategically designed and sized for optimum efficiency and taking into consideration both capacity and performance.

“We are able to take our current 99.999% ‘resiliency’ from AWS to 99.999% of ‘availability’ using the MetroPod architecture,” said Rouse. “We anticipate seeing significant savings over the next few years as well as a significant reduction in our backup and recovery times. Most importantly, TechOne is now able to manage, move, protect, and share data whenever needed through a Data Fabric.“

“Hosted within Equinix, the MetroPod provides TechOne customers with optimum flexibility, redundancy, and scale as they explore alternate cloud solutions. By leveraging Equinix’s interconnection platform with direct access to multiple clouds, customers have access to advanced hybrid architecture that can drive significant business outcomes,” said Jeremy Deutsch, MD, Equinix Australia.

“With this implementation, NetApp has enabled TechOne to meet the complex demands of their global clients with this highly efficient and affordable solution,” said Steve Manley, VP, NetApp ANZ. “This solution is specifically designed for TechOne’s customers who require choice and control in a dynamic environment.“

Additional benefits TechOne has experienced include up to an 85% reduction of production data with NetApp deduplication and NetApp FlexClone technology and a tenfold performance improvement of AWS’s fastest storage tier with NPS for AWS. TechOne’s customers have also gained the ability to prove sovereignty of data to Australian regulators. These benefits also make TechOne future-ready by reducing the risk with NPS for Cloud, making the company able to support alternate cloud solutions.