DC09-171 May 21, 2009
BT Moves to Hewlett Packard for first in Ireland Pay-per-use Storage model
Dublin, May 21, 2009 Hewlett Packard has today announced that it has signed a significant contract with BT. The deal, which follows a highly competitive tender process, will see the replacement of BT’s Enterprise Storage infrastructure with the first of its type high-end utility storage model ever to be implemented in Ireland.
These high-performance storage arrays are specially designed for large enterprises that require constant access to vital data while allowing continued operations in the event of a disaster. BT has contracted with HP for the provision of two high-end storage arrays (XP24000’s) which will initially provide a total of 70+TB of storage capable of over 200,000 transactions per second – the highest in the industry. The array will also help support the operation of BT’s mission critical business applications.
As part of the new installation, BT will utilise a pay per-use model which will allow their business to only pay for actual processor and capacity usage. This is different to more traditional financing approaches that are based on fixed-payment amounts for the coverage period and as such will allow BT to experience substantial cost savings.
BT will consume and pay for data storage capacity on a per-Gigabyte (GB) basis, matching storage utilization exactly to the costs of storage capacity. The model facilitates automated metering of capacity usage, and monthly billing depending on average usage per month.
This storage model also helps BT to allocate storage costs across its business based on usage. The model is facilitated by close co-operation between HP’s StorageWorks Division who provided the IT infrastructure and HP Financial Services who will provide BT with financial lifecycle management; thus providing a seamless utility model to the business.
The contract also includes the implementation of the HP Storage Essentials software suite, which will provide BT with end-to-end management of this new data storage infrastructure, significantly reducing storage management costs.
BT will also be utilising the latest storage virtualization technologies from HP (XP Thin Provisioning and XP External Storage software) to manage its storage resources simply and dynamically. In doing so, it will achieve better asset utilization, better scope for IT growth and reduced operating costs.
The two XP24000 systems are configured to provide remote replication copying data modifications between separate data centres, thus providing the highest levels of resilience and business continuance. They will support the rapidly growing storage requirements of the key production applications and databases at BT, as well as the IT development and testing requirements of the organisation.
HP also provided the online migration of data from the legacy Storage Array platform, to the new HP system. HP Data Migration Services managed the planning, project management, testing and implementation of the migration project with no impact on BT applications availability during the project. This migration was completed in less than eight weeks from installation of the new systems.
BT customers will ultimately benefit from the successful completion of this project as the new HP infrastructure supports all key customer-interfacing as well as back-end systems. This means BT will be able to service customers more reliably and cost effectively by virtue of the reduced cost, increased performance and increased availability delivered by the new HP architecture.
Seamus Doyle, IT director at BT said:
“This highly successful project involved the replacement of our legacy Storage Array Network with a HP XP24000 platform. It involved the migration all our key applications – Siebel, Billing, File Shares and others over a two month period with no disruption to our day to day business operation. The project was the equivalent of undertaking ‘open heart surgery’ on BT’s core IT infrastructure, was flawlessly executed as a result of close teamwork between BT and HP, and successfully completed to a very tight schedule.
The project will realize significant annualized saving and moves BT operations in Ireland onto BT’s global standard for storage. It is another successful step on the IT Intercept strategy of moving onto common group wide platforms”.
Karl Jordan, Country Manager, Enterprise Storage at HP Ireland stated:
“This innovative project at BT is a model for other large organisations as we enter a period of financial uncertainty and caution regarding capital expenditure.
The combination of leading new storage technologies from HP, such as Thin Provisioning, Storage Virtualisation and the pay-per-use utility storage model can deliver significant savings by helping organisations gain better utilisation of disk capacity, better utilisation of existing storage assets, and better control of their IT budgets.”
Ends
~ Notes to editor ~
About HP
HP, the world’s largest technology company, provides printing and personal computing products and IT services, software and solutions that simplify the technology experience for consumers and businesses. HP completed its acquisition of EDS on Aug. 26, 2008. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com/.
