Client: Leading North American publishing company with business units that include more than 30 magazines, 21 regional newspapers, Web and cable properties.

Challenge: Our client is building a shared services IT organization to increase efficiency and ensure that all technology costs provide an appropriate investment return to the parent organization. The shared services group is responsible for more than 650 servers and 500 terabytes of data. Based on known factors, data volumes are expected to grow significantly for the foreseeable future. As such, our client sought a tiered storage environment that would align data value and accessibility with appropriately engineered storage components.

Solution: Systems Alliance technical architects designed a Storage Area Network (SAN) that segregated content to support hundreds of applications and systems across a multi-tier SAN architecture. Vendor products were carefully tested and assessed to determine performance/price metrics before implementing the design. Costs were reduced significantly by deploying multiple combinations of faster and slower disk and tools to meet requirements. Our substantial skills with Sun, Hitachi, Hewlett Packard and various tape library vendors shortened design time and cost.