The opening days of the New Year for the Irish IT industry have been marked by two major deals in the storage sector. Following a competitive tender process, Heineken Ireland has awarded a significant contract to StorageTek and data centre provider Interxion has been chosen to house the IT infrastructure and storage area network (SAN) for the storage service provider Central Databank.
The major contract awarded by Heineken Ireland to StorageTek will involve the provision of hardware, maintenance and support for the drinks firm’s network storage infrastructure. The value of the contract has not been disclosed but it is believed to be a six-figure sum.
The tender specification outlined by Heinken called for a complete storage and backup solution that enables the company to protect and maintain a secure environment for all corporate data located at its manufacturing facility in Cork. This will involve the implementation of a StorageTek 2-terabyte SAN with a modular upgrade path and StorageTek’s SANtricity software. The solution will improve disk storage utilisation, enable server consolidation and result in total cost savings in the long-term.
The ICT manager at Heineken, Donal Manning, commented: “Data storage and protection is a critical factor in our overall IT management strategy and as a result required an updated solution that would be highly scalable and robust to protect this valuable asset. StorageTek was selected as our partner in this area because it offered an unrivalled solution with a streamlined management software tool, best-of-breed hardware and exceptional support and maintenance. Overall, it was felt that the storage and services solution from StorageTek offered the best return on investment to us.”
In the second major deal revealed this morning, Interxion’s data centre in Dublin will enable Central Databank to provide real-time “disk on demand” enterprise-level, secure off-site storage solutions to its SME and enterprise customers alike on a 24 x7 basis.
As part of the overall deal, valued at around €700,000, Interxion will also operate as a key node element to the fully redundant fibre optic network that Central Databank has deployed in partnership with Smart Telecom.
“Businesses have become more dependent on online data and as strict legislation is introduced to protect the integrity of this information, it is increasingly important that data is backed up securely with policy-driven plans in place in the event of data loss or disaster,” said Eric Hardiman, chief operating officer of Central Databank. “Interxion provides Central Databank and our customers with the peace of mind that this is always possible through the 24/7 provision of power, connectivity and guaranteed levels of service availability.”
The group managing director of Interxion, Anthony Foy, explained that EU legislation is putting the onus on businesses to protect and secure their data, resulting in growing demand for off-site storage services like those provided by Central Databank.
“By offering stringent operational resilience and rapid response to any equipment glitch or network outage, we are able to help Central Databank ensure its on-demand storage is always available. With data centres located all across Europe, we can also offer Central Databank the chance to easily expand operations,” Foy said.
By John Kennedy
