Clark County (US)
VANCOUVER, Wash. - When you are responsible for storing critical information for Clark County and the city of Vancouver, as well as for the Clark County Regional Emergency Services Agency (CRESA 911), you don't just buy storage systems off the shelf. Not only is there no margin for error, but also you have three different and very critical stakeholders to convince to spend taxpayer dollars. It's a long and involved process.
Ray Collings, Manager of the Information Systems Group at Clark Country knew he couldn't just tell the city and country and CRESA 911 what to buy. He had to show them all the options and help them decide for themselves. When he saw increasing performance problems with the county's aging storage system, he knew who to call for help. He called Logicalis.
Collings knew that Logicalis account manager Wayne Machovec and technical consultant Ben Shaevitz understood not only the technical situation he was dealing with, but also the practical and political situations as well.
In the loop
"Not having to constantly re-educate a supplier or vendor on our environment helps us a lot," Collings says. "Logicalis is definitely in the loop. They really are an extension of our team. We could go and find the lowest bid," he adds, "but typically Logicalis is right there, anyway."
As usual, Logicalis did a lot more than deliver competitive pricing.
"Logicalis helped us figure out all the quotes for all the options," says Senior Unix Administrator Victor Wilkerson. "Ben spent several weeks determining what the disk configurations would be for all the applications. We have a great working relationship with Logicalis, going on six years now. It's a partnership, really: internally with them, and our customers, and HP. For us, that's just huge. Those guys are great," he adds. "They know their stuff and they keep up on it We couldn't do it without Logicalis."
Working collaboratively, Ben and Wayne from Logicalis, and Ray and Victor from Clark County put together a detailed analysis of the storage options. Presented with all the facts, the county, city and CRESA 911 decision makers all agreed with their recommendation that the HP StorageWorks XP10000 Disk Array was the compelling choice.
The right choice
Time has proven they made right choice.
"With the old system we were getting a call every week," Collings says. "And those calls don't always come during business hours. Users call any time of the day or night...as they should. Since we've installed the XP10000 in February," he adds, "we've had zero calls."
Collings notes that having everything run smoothly allows him to concentrate on more strategic projects like the disaster recovery project that his department is working on now with Logicalis.