CellularManager Cellular POS Point of Sale Software
Data Guard Systems sees power savings with SAN rollout
May 16, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Moving to a storage-area network (SAN) has saved Data Guard Systems Inc., a provider of a hosted online accounting package for 3,000 independent cell phone stores, enough money to pay for the new storage arrangement within a year.
Data Guard Systems, which president and founder Timothy Maliyil describes as being "like Salesforce.com for a specific niche," had been using 60 servers in a data center, plus another 60 servers for redundancy and backup to prevent any downtime. Those servers required 240 amps of power. And the Cambridge, Mass., company was faced with having to buy another 30 servers -- plus an additional 30 backup servers -- to handle the tripling in business it had experienced the previous year.
Instead, it moved in March to a SAN comprising EMC Clariion CX500 arrays totaling between 6TB and 7TB of storage from Dell and four Dell PowerEdge 6800 servers with dual-core processors.
The Dell servers run VMware to virtualize the company's older servers, and the entire SAN uses just 24 amps of power, Maliyil said -- a tenth of what was needed before. Virtualizing the servers also resulted in much higher utilization.
Because Data Guard was using three data centers -- in Boston, Denver and New York -- Maliyil saved $20,000 a month in data center costs, money that primarily went for electricity. The SAN itself cost $150,000, and the servers and other incidentals another $75,000, for an overall price tag of $225,000.
"It paid for itself in a year," Maliyil said. "I'd rather spend money on hardware than on a data center."
Moreover, adding data center space would likely have meant the expense and effort of setting up hardware in a different part of the building and running fiber between the two operations, Maliyil said.
Data Guard approached several vendors, and "Dell beat out the competition by a significant amount," Maliyil said. His company, which started as a consulting project three years ago, now has 35 employees. Support costs are unavoidable with the servers, but the company can run the SAN with a lean staff, meaning Maliyil didn't need to add more employees when business tripled.
The SAN has also made backups and disaster recovery easier. Previously, the servers at one data center were backed up over a point-to-point connection to another data center, using compression to reduce the amount of data transferred. Now Maliyil can push data from an entire server to another data center using EMC Corp.'s SAN Copy software, he said.
"If we had a physical disaster, we have the data stored remotely," he said, noting that the company doesn't do backups to tape any longer because restoring from a disk is faster -- and his customers demand the speed.
With the new setup, Maliyil said, he is ready for more corporate growth.
"Because we bought this, we have room to grow -- even if we had another explosive year like last year," he said.
Data Guard SAN Could Pay for Itself in a Year
May 22, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Data Guard Systems Inc., a provider of a hosted accounting system for independent cell phone stores, expects that a $225,000 storage-area network installed in March will pay for itself within a year.
Timothy Maliyil, president and founder of Data Guard, said the monthly electric costs for the new SAN will likely be $20,000 less than the alternative storage upgrade.
The new SAN includes two EMC Clariion CX500 arrays capable of handling between 6TB and 7TB of storage and four Dell dual-processor PowerEdge servers running EMC 's VMware virtualization software, he said.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based company installed the SAN to support its rapid growth, Maliyil said, noting that DataGuard's sales tripled between 2004 and 2005. It also uses 60 smaller Dell PowerEdge servers to store data.
Before buying the SAN, Data Guard had looked at doubling the number of PowerEdge servers to support the growth, but it chose the SAN for its reduced electric costs.
Moreover, adding servers likely would have required additional data center space, increasing expenses, Maliyil said.
The SAN will "pay for itself in a year," he said. "I'd rather spend money on hardware than on a data center."
Maliyil said using support services from Dell Inc., which supplied the Clariion systems under its reseller agreement with EMC Corp., eliminates the need for additional staffers to run the new systems.
With the new setup, Maliyil noted, Data Guard can support rapid growth. "Because we bought this, we have room to grow -- even if we had another explosive year like last year," he said.
Data Guard Systems Dials Dell To Consolidate Enterprise Network
Cell Phone Software Maker Rings Up Savings in Utility Costs, Power Consumption
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Round Rock, Texas, May 10, 2006
Data Guard Systems expects to reduce monthly utility costs by $10,000, slash power consumption by 80 percent and increase administrative productivity through a recent hardware purchase from Dell.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based software maker for cell phone providers is ringing up the savings by consolidating myriad database servers and disparate storage devices to four servers and one storage-area network.
Dell replaced Data Guard System's network of 45 database servers with four DellTM PowerEdgeTM 6800 servers running VMWare® ESX virtualization software. The software senses available capacity within a server and assigns the computing tasks to be processed at that location without interruption. Terabytes of data were also migrated from different storage devices onto a Dell/EMC CX500 storage area network, simplifying its management.
Data Guard Systems' software helps cellular retailers manage sales activities such as opening new customer accounts and managing inventory. With the company experiencing tremendous growth, its computer infrastructure was showing signs of strain.
"Many of our 3,000 cell phone retailers expect us to be open 24 hours a day so it is essential that our software operate on reliable hardware,"said Tim Maliyil, president, Data Guard Systems. "We also said we needed a vendor that could simplify information-technology operations to make us more nimble and competitive. Dell delivered on both fronts."
"The Dell team prides itself on being a trusted adviser to enterprise customers who come to us to design and build their data centers," said David Marmonti, vice president of Dell's preferred corporate accounts division. "With the work completed for Data Guard Systems, they're now capable of handling their business expansion for years to come."
About Data Guard Systems
Data Guard Systems, Inc., based in Cambridge, Mass., is a leading developer and marketer of online business management software. Its premier product, CellularManager® Cellular POS, offers a comprehensive suite of data management and enterprise synchronization tools with complete point-of-sale integration to independent wireless and cellular retailers, distributors and master agents. For more information, visit http://www.dataguardsystems.com.
About Dell
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services they trust and value. Uniquely enabled by its direct business model, Dell sells more systems globally than any computer company, placing it No. 25 on the Fortune 500. Company revenue for the last four quarters was $56 billion. For more information, visit www.dell.com. To get Dell news direct, visit www.dell.com/RSS.
