When a leading service provider in the UK needed an information lifecycle solution, IBM delivered — helping the company transform its storage infrastructure into an on demand environment.
Star is a leading provider of managed technology services to midsize businesses and public sector organizations in the UK. Founded in 1995, Star has 4,400 business customers using a broad range of solutions, including managed technology services, on demand technology, business applications, business continuity, email, security and connectivity.
Star needed to be able to share storage capacity and processing power seamlessly across different customer environments to facilitate competitive pricing and high flexibility.
IBM helped Star to create an on demand environment for storage and application hosting using IBM TotalStorage® and IBM Tivoli® technologies.
"IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller provides us a virtualized abstraction layer that doesn't care what the underlying storage systems are," said Richard Ellis, vice president of Managed Technology Services, Star. "This means that we can look at storage in terms of how much capacity we have, without needing to think about the reality of how it is spread across different physical systems.
"The IBM virtualization technologies are critically important to us, because they have the ability to enable us to move from a server-centric view of the world to one that is based on our customers' requirements and how best to meet them."
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