Dell signs SAN deal with Nth Tipp County Council


3 Feb 2003

There was some good news for computer giant Dell’s Irish operations today. The company has announced a major deal with North Tipperary County Council.

Under the deal the council will use a 730GB size Dell/EMC Clariion storage area network (SAN) to centralise the storage of all its planning, GIS and financial management system’s data.

Dell PowerEdge servers will also power the council’s business management application and their intranet and extranet requirements.

The contract includes three years of Dell Premier Gold support, supplied from the company’s Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Expert Enterprise Support Centre at Cherrywood in county Dublin.

Under the contract Dell has supplied and installed one Dell/EMC FC 4500 and two Dell/EMC eight port switches complete with Navisphere Manager software; six rack-mounted Dell PowerEdge 2550 and 6450 servers, running Microsoft Windows 2000 Server TM and one Dell PowerVault 128T with Dell PowerSuites Veritas SAN edition.

Ger Lynch head of IS at North Tipperary County Council said: “Dell was responsible for installing and configuring the system as well as managing all the data migration. Centralising our storage is the first building block in a bigger process – we intend to build and expand on this solution in line with our business demands. This will help us reduce our support and administration costs.”

The equipment was manufactured at Dell’s European manufacturing operations in Limerick with sales, installation, project management and support provided by Dell’s public sector division at Cherrywood.

The ongoing local partnership between Dell and EMC forms part of a worldwide five-year, multi-billion dollar strategic alliance agreement announced late last year, designed to accelerate the growth of both companies’ storage systems businesses.

By Suzanne Byrne

Pictured: Left to right, Tim McCarthy, general manager, Dell, Ger Lynch, head of information systems, North Tipperary County Council and Tony Quinn, sales manager EMC