Business issues
As a global provider of business-to-business software services, Level 3 Communications® Software Spectrum subsidiary had a lot of its business riding on its information storage systems. The company's data center was experiencing frequent disk failures, some of which required the rebuilding of disk-based data from tape backup systems. And performance was sluggish for batch runs and other I/O-intensive operations. What's more, the company faced special management challenges associated with storage devices that were directly attached to multiple Unix and Windows NT systems, each of which had to be managed independently.

Solutions
Software Spectrum worked closely with Soccour Solutions, a StorageTek value-added reseller, in the quest to identify a comprehensive solution to its complex storage issues. After a detailed evaluation of competitive products, including systems from IBM, EMC and other vendors, Software Spectrum selected a storage area network (SAN) solution built around a StorageTek disk subsystem.

Financial benefits
The reliability of the StorageTek solution has helped Software Spectrum prevent the potential loss of millions of dollars in online sales. Downtime in the company's online sales operations can cost the company more than $500,000 per hour in lost revenue. Also, in its data center alone, Software Spectrum has saved an average of 15-20 hours of staff time per month that was previously lost to system downtime.

Business benefits
The StorageTek solution has helped Software Spectrum keep its online sales operations up and running on a 24x7 basis. The solution's high-availability and built-in redundancy features help ensure that a disk or CPU failure will not bring down the company's online sales operations.

The time required for the company's backup runs, which were taking 9.5 hours, has been reduced by 65 percent. A batch run that previously took 27 hours has been cut to just 10 hours, ensuring that it no longer spills over from the weekend into the peak hours of the business week. In all, Software Spectrum has reduced the time required for batch processing by 24 hours per week.

Technology benefits
System management has been greatly streamlined through the implementation of a SAN with StorageTek SANtricity Storage Manager software for centralized management of storage resources. Previously, the disk storage resources were directly attached to individual servers, creating substantial management burdens. Now, system administrators can work with a single pool of disk resources that they allocate to approximately 10 servers, including Sun Solaris and Windows NT systems.