Why EMC Clariion is worse than IBM XIV Storage System?

The IBM company announced in September, 2011 project completion on upgrade of infrastructure of data storage for schedule systems of resources of the enterprise and a business intelligence in the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC). The high-performance hardware complex based on storage systems of IBM XIV will allow UMMC to increase the gliding speed of resources and management of finance at the enterprise.

The contract for project implementation was signed by IBM regional office in Yekaterinburg and implemented by forces of the business partner of IBM, Trinity Urals company. IBM actively develops the activity in regions of Russia within general strategy of the company on expansion of presence in the growing markets. At the moment IBM in Russia has 15 offices and the service centers, including office in Yekaterinburg.

Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company is the largest Russian metallurgical enterprise, the second in value producer of copper in Russia which part about 100 companies are. Continuously increasing functionality of an enterprise management system, UMMC faced the shortage of performance of the existing hardware platforms and complexity of support of diverse solutions. The management of IT department of the company began the project on upgrade of a hardware platform. Considering the competitive systems, specialists of UMMC stopped on the solution IBM XIV with the best, optimum balanced performance measures, availability and operational efficiency in comparison with storage systems of EMC.

"Performance of operation of applications of SAP in combination with simplicity of management of DWH was a crucial indicator when choosing a new hardware platform of storage for us, - Haydarshin Anwar, the head of department of information and technical support of "UMMC Holding" noted. - The solution IBM XIV meets all these requirements. Now on it modules of a business intelligence, ERP and the module of management of financial data are placed".

Specialists of UMMC together with experts of IBM analyzed experience of application of different storage systems and held IBM XIV system testing in the Center of innovations of IBM in Russia and the CIS. The unique technology, performance of instant pictures and virtualization of resources of storage as the principle of foundation architecture of a system were decisive arguments for benefit of the choice of IBM XIV.

"The project implemented in Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company shows efficiency of use of XIV for centralization of the automated control system for the enterprise, - Alexander Reytman, the manager on storage systems of the corporate level, IBM in Russia and the CIS told. – At the same time IBM XIV gives unique opportunities for storage and data management".

The contract for project implementation was signed in the 4th quarter 2010. Planning, implementation of the new platform and data migration were osushchestvlyona by means of technical specialists of Trinity Urals company. Upgrade of a hardware platform was made within several days with the actual lack of idle time thanks to IBM XIV technologies. In development plans for the project – upgrade of the ERP systems server platform.

At the end of 2010 UMMC-Holding decided to update the storage systems as old IBM DS4800 disk arrays were operated more than five years and completely developed the resource. In December, 2010 the company held the tender for the choice of the supplier of disk arrays in which in addition to IBM which offered XIV also EMC with the Clariion CX4 240 system participated. Haydarshin Anwar stated several reasons for which his company selected IBM. First of all, XIV is the system of the class high-end (in any case, quite so it is positioned by IBM though on some signs, for example, to use instead of the disks Enterprise of cheaper SATA disks, it does not conform to requirements to high-end) while EMC Clariion CX4 treats the systems of the middle class. Originally the offer of IBM was more expensive than the proposal of the competitor for 40%, but then the vendor reduced the price of XIV and as a result the difference in the price was reduced to 10%. Besides, managers of IBM managed to convince the customer that licensing of software for XIV will cost considerably cheaper, than software for EMC Clariion CX4. At last, the customer knew that EMC prepares alternation of generations of disk arrays of the middle class (it occurred in January of this year) and Clariion CX4 cannot be upgraded to new VNX, i.e. the array of EMC right after purchase would pass into discharge of the outdated systems.