NetApp Selected by CDL

NetApp, Inc. has been selected by CDL (Cheshire Datasystems Limited), provider of software packages for insurance retailers, to drive productivity with data management solutions.

In the retail insurance sector, CDL has been helping the UK’s biggest insurance retailers for 40 years. Supporting customers with automation for telematics and connected home devices – empowering them with real-time pricing capabilities through data enrichment from a number of sources – its need for performance and scalability when it comes to data management became essential as its customer base grew, making the time-to-market and agility of software development essential.

The in-house development team needed a solution that would cut down a three-day investigation time for software glitches. Prompted by the demands of a new customer win that demanded an expanding workload and the need for additional data management solutions, CDL engaged with IT solutions provider Cetus Solutions Limited to help define its data management needs and build upon its existing NetApp hybrid flash storage systems with a new all-flash FAS (AFF).

As a result, CDL cranked-up the speed of its Oracle database, cutting investigation time down from three days to 24 hours. Today, developers can quickly clone databases and automate clones of the tests, a task which had previously been carried out manually. CDL has also been able to utilise NetApp’s SnapMirror software to send data copies between clusters, while using Snap Manager for its Oracle database and VMware instances. As a result, CDL has created a backup to improve DR.

Dan Calderbank, senior IT engineer, CDL, said: “Having shared a customer relationship with NetApp for over five years, we gained the confidence to scale out our data capabilities, as well as incorporating ONTAP to streamline our data management. We did explore other vendors’ offerings, but it was clear that both the hardware and software provisions were not matched. The perfect integration of NetApp’s solution with our data ecosystem immediately produced results against our existing challenges. We are now offering the speed our customers need on the backend of our Oracle databases – and we have substantial capacity for growth.”

Mike English, MD, Cetus Solutions, added: “NetApp is a distinguished data management company, with an established relationship with CDL. While we ensured all vendor offerings were taken into consideration, the scope of work required based to CDL’s growing portfolio of customers meant that a performance boosting flash solution with ONTAP was the best option. We are very proud to be a part of this partnership and the successful business transformation in its wake. It is exciting to watch the impact of such dramatic performance boosts and we look forward to further utilising the solution’s capabilities.”

Nick Thurlow, MD for UK and Ireland, NetApp, concluded: “CDL is an industry leader in retail insurance, bringing the latest data-driven technological offerings to customers, such as automation and telematics. As the business grows, delivering software packages to key market players with a modernised IT approach to data management is essential, enabling a scalable virtual environment from the backend to the front. This digital transformation sets CDL in good stead as its reputation as a market leader.”