NORTHSTAR Trade Finance Takes "No Compromise" Approach with EMC VNXe Unified Storage

HOPKINTON, Mass., Nov. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced that NORTHSTAR Trade Finance, Inc., a leading provider of financing to small and mid-size Canadian exporters, selected EMC® VNXe™ unified storage over Dell, HP and IBM to run its 90% virtualized server infrastructure running on VMware virtualization and cloud infrastructure technologies. The VNXe has boosted both performance and availability for the company's critical transactional, financial and customer-facing applications including SQL, while greatly simplifying IT administration—with no compromise.

Customer Benefits:

• Increased Performance—EMC VNXe performs 4X faster than NORTHSTAR's previous HP storage solution, enabling more responsive service to customers.
• Improved Efficiency—Thin provisioning helps NORTHSTAR optimize storage utilization without compromising performance or capacity; Integration with VMware virtualization and cloud infrastructure technologies enables NORTHSTAR to create virtual machines in minutes versus hours to smoothly support growing business needs.
• Simplified Management—Built-in wizards on the VNXe shave hours off of daily system management, improving IT productivity and freeing time for more strategic projects.

Customer Challenges and Solution:

NORTHSTAR was moving along with an aggressive plan to virtualize its core business applications. Its existing storage system struggled to perform within the virtualized environment and could not keep pace with ever-growing data requirements. NORTHSTAR's IT infrastructure had also run out of storage capacity and could no longer support the addition of the lightest weight applications. As a result, NORTHSTAR's sole IT administrator faced a time-consuming and complex process to provision applications and manage the virtual environment.

After closely evaluating other vendors, NORTHSTAR selected EMC VNXe unified storage for its efficiency, simplicity and affordability to support its critical business applications, including Microsoft Exchange email, Microsoft SQL Server databases and Sage ERP Accpac business management. NORTHSTAR also utilizes EMC Unisphere™ for integrated management of both storage assets and the VMware virtual environment.

Customer Quotes:

Pardave Lehry, Technical Analyst, NORTHSTAR Trade Finance Inc.

"We looked at Dell, HP, IBM and EMC. The VNXe was clearly the best choice for our needs. It met our requirements for top simplicity and efficiency. We also liked that the VNXe was affordable, more innovative and offered a simpler management interface than the other solutions."

"The VNXe was remarkably simple to set up. The wizards take all the guesswork out of configuring the system. I just plugged in the VNXe, hooked up a laptop and had it running in 30-minutes. It was that simple."

"The integration between VNXe and VMware technologies really simplified creating and managing virtual machines. With HP or Dell, creating a new virtual machine was confusing and would have taken four hours of working with different tools to provision the storage. With EMC Unisphere and VMware vCenter™ Server, I can create a new virtual machine in less than 20-minutes."

"I am blown away by how fast VNXe moves data. I had provisioned an 80-gigabyte virtual machine for a SQL Server application and expected the data migration to take a few hours. But it was done in three-minutes. It was amazing. Generally, I'm seeing performance on the VNXe that's 4X faster than our old HP system. With gains like these, we're able to execute transactions more quickly and deliver more responsive service to our customers."

"Our customer and financial data is critical to our operations. VNXe makes my job easier because I don't have to worry about downtime or other disruptions to the business. The built-in redundancy and high availability features eliminate single points of failure. And with thin provisioning on the VNXe, I can maximize storage utilization and performance without my prior concerns about running out of storage."

"EMC's VNXe is optimized for VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure). As our business continues to expand, we plan to move additional VDI applications into our smaller offices and they will all be supported by VNXe."

"I definitely recommend EMC and EMC VNXe to others. It's simple, efficient and affordable. The level of customer service I've received from EMC has been phenomenal. The entire sales process was the smoothest I've experienced. It's true that people make the organization and my account team is the prime reason why I will continue to recommend EMC products in the future."

About VNX

The award-winning VNX Family offers customers simple, efficient, affordable and powerful unified storage optimized for virtualized application environments. With the EMC FAST Suite, VNX customers can cost-effectively leverage the benefits of Flash performance — with "no compromise". VNXe offers an affordable unified storage platform for smaller businesses with solution-focused software that's easy to manage, provision, and protect. The Family dramatically simplifies the deployment and management of virtualized applications, including those from Microsoft, Oracle, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions from VMware and Citrix.

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about EMC VNXe
• Learn more about EMC Unisphere
• Read the customer profile: NORTHSTAR
• Connect with EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and ECN

About EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

EMC and VNXe are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. VMware and VMware vCenter are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE EMC Corporation