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Founded in 1838, Bennett, Coleman & Co (BCCL) is not just
India's largest media house, but virtually the last name in publishing,
boasting of major dailies and periodicals including The Times of India, The
Economic Times, Mumbai Mirror, Navbharat Times, The Maharashtra Times, Femina
and Filmfare.
Till 2006, BCCL was running SAP R3 and pre-press applications on
IBM AIX servers and Shark storage system. As business needs grew, the IBM
infrastructure could not keep pace with BCCL's evolving scalability and
performance needs. So, BCCL had to build a foundation for business growth while
assuring rock-solid availability, since any downtime in the system would
translate to lost revenue opportunities.
For the Times Response and pre-press IT infrastructure decision,
BCCL called for competitive bids from IBM, Sun, and Fujitsu/NetApp. After a
detailed comparative analysis and reference checks, BCCL selected Fujitsu.
FlexFrame and NetApp storage for running Times Response and pre-press.
Simplified backup/restore and replication functionality was built into all
NetApp platforms, requiring only a software license for activation. NetApp
SnapShot was already proven in BCCL's editorial department, where frequent
SnapShot copies (without degrading system performance) assured best RPO. In
addition, the RAID-DP feature built into all NetApp systems assured protection
against double disk failures.
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At a Glance |
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Challenges
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Need to build a scalable infrastructure for key mySAP applications to
bring out its publications on time
Solution
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FlexFrame solution by Fujitsu was selected for its scale-out capabilities,
with the underlying storage systems from NetApp: FAS3050HA for the data
center, FAS3020 for disk-to-disk backup, and FAS3020 at the DR site
Benefits
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Reduced TCO via easy manageability
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Reduced complexity and cost through unified NFS and FCP support
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Enhanced ability to respond quickly to changes in the business environment
with non-disruptive scaling and flexible allocation |
Seamless scalability was a critical parameter that influenced
the NetApp adoption. With its single unified architecture across all storage
platforms, NetApp systems could easily scale storage performance or capacity
with data-in-place upgrades. In a non-stop operation, scaling performance or
capacity was required to be a non-disruptive process and the FlexFrame/NetApp
solution delivered this.
Another important parameter was flexibility: the ability to
reallocate compute and storage resources depending on business needs at a given
point of time. Considering the real-time nature of the media business, changes
in business needs were bound to occur frequently. In such a scenario, BCCL had
to be able to change compute band storage resource allocations across various
subsystems, all without having to follow complex and time-consuming processes.
The FlexFrame/NetApp solution offered better capability.
The first visible benefit was migration from the old to the new
systems in one month flat. The FlexFrame/NetApp solution's flexibility, ease
of management, and built-in business continuity capability ensured that BCCL did
not have to go through time-consuming and painful processes to migrate its
systems. System performance has also significantly improved after migration to
the new architecture. Efficient disk-to-disk backup processes and granular
replication capabilities have enabled BCCL's IT team to deliver on demanding
availability SLAs while easing the management and administrative burden on the
IT staff.
Rajneesh De
rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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