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CUSTOMER PROFILE
Created in 1997 and based in Holyoke, Massachusetts, ISO New England is the not-forprofit corporation responsible for the day-to-day reliable operation of New England's bulk power generation and transmission system. It provides oversight and fair administration of the region's wholesale electricity marketplace, comprised of more than 200 market participants, and management of a comprehensive regional bulk power system planning process.
CHALLENGE
To keep electricity flowing from Eastport, Maine to Westport, Connecticut, ISO New England depends heavily upon its state-of-the-art data center, managed by a top-notch IT staff.
Over time, however, constantly increasing storage demands had strained the organization's resources. Cycle times for runaway backup jobs became painfully long, and tape costs were mounting as the size of backups grew. The current host-based replication strategy was successfully protecting data, but it had become increasingly costly and could be disruptive to key applications.
Breakthroughs in storage technology promised relief, but ISO New England's staff did not have the time or the advanced storage knowledge required to manage what was expected to be a multi-million dollar infrastructure upgrade.
SOLUTION
ISO New England turned to Daymark Solutions for help. As an experienced technology solutions provider, Daymark has the skills and expertise ISO New England needed to design and implement an updated storage infrastructure and improve its backup operations significantly.
Working closely with the ISO New England's team, Daymark's professionals carefully assessed the current storage and backup/recovery nvironments and recommended a complete storage refresh that offered consolidation, increased software functionality and significant long-term savings. Most importantly, the new infrastructure would no longer rely upon proprietary systems and would be better suited to ISO New England's internal skill sets.
To streamline the acquisition process, Daymark facilitated all vendor contact and provided ISO New England with the pertinent information it needed, devoid of marketing hyperbole, to make educated decisions based on their requirements. Daymark staged the new infrastructures at its state-of-the-art Integration Center (IC), configuring and pre-testing the solution completely before bringing the ISO New England team to the IC for final testing.
This unique approach, which Daymark employs in nearly every project, eliminated the usual delays that ISO New England had experienced in the past and significantly increased the company's confidence in its ability to meet tight production timelines. Once testing and integration was complete, Daymark implemented the new infrastructure with minimal disruption to ISO New England's current operations.
This new environment gave ISO New England better storage management capabilities enterprise-wide, which enabled the IT staff to turn its attention to other business-critical initiatives. It also freed up CPU cycles by using a storage-based solution for off-site replication, improving replication success rates and reducing costs.