SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - December 15, 2009) - NetApp (
NASDAQ:
NTAP) announced today that
Kelley Blue Book,
www.kbb.com, turned to NetApp for its virtual storage
needs to support its massive business growth. NetApp® storage efficiency
and VMware® solutions enabled Kelley Blue Book to meet its growing
business demands and maintain its position as the number-one provider of
new and used car information while saving or deferring hundreds of
thousands of dollars in IT costs.
In 1995 Kelley Blue Book launched an online version of its iconic new- and
used-car pricing and information guide. By 2004 the company's headcount
more than quadrupled. As the company grew, so did its data infrastructure
and storage requirements. Kelley Blue Book deployed more than 300 physical
servers to run its Web site and serve its back office, but had trouble
scaling its infrastructure as the company continued to grow and roll out
new products and services.
Kelley Blue Book partnered with Trace3, a regional systems integrator and
NetApp Star-level solutions partner in the NetApp Partner Program that
achieved Virtualization Specialization. Together they worked to relieve the
strain of its massive data growth and deploy an infrastructure that would
allow the company to continue to grow and innovate. Trace3 recommended
VMware to virtualize the servers and NetApp storage to reduce hardware
costs and increase scalability. NetApp storage now supports nearly 300
virtual machines as part of Kelley Blue Book's development, staging,
production, and quality assurance environments.
Since installing NetApp storage to support its virtual infrastructure,
Kelley Blue Book has kept up its frenetic growth while reducing cost and
complexity. While the company continues to add 20 or more virtual machines
a month, NetApp deduplication technology has reduced by 70% the amount of
storage space used in its VMware environment. This alone helped Kelley Blue
Book postpone $100,000 in disk purchases by at least a year. NetApp also
streamlined Kelley Blue Book's storage network and boosted system
performance by 400%.
"With NetApp, data storage is no longer hindering the growth of our
business or the ability to get data to our customers. Instead, our storage
is now delivering tremendous business value," said Grant Leathers, director
of Enterprise Infrastructure. "NetApp was definitely the right storage
solution at the right price and exactly what our business needed to get to
the next level."
NetApp has also helped Kelley Blue Book become more cost effective and
flexible when bringing products to market. Since NetApp virtualization
solutions are scalable and dynamic, Kelley Blue Book avoided spending
$300,000 in storage when it adopted VMware. Instead of trying to predict
how much storage it would need far in the future, it was able to buy only
what it immediately needed and then later add capacity on an as-needed
basis. This has helped the company reduce storage costs by not having to
guess what its storage needs might be years down the line or by ripping and
replacing storage when those needs change. This flexibility in NetApp
hardware is also reflected in the software, which allows Kelley Blue Book
to grow, configure, and provision virtual volumes on demand. This has been
particularly useful to the development team at kbb.com and has avoided
costly delays when production needs change at the last minute.
"Kelley Blue Book is a great example of how NetApp's virtualization and
storage efficiency technologies help our customers not only maximize their
return on investment but also deliver greater value to their business,"
said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions and Alliances at NetApp.
"Kelley Blue Book can now maintain its competitive edge, get products to
market faster, and remain number one in its field."
Discuss this news in the NetApp Community, where you can exchange thoughts
and ideas on a variety of topics with our community members. Collaborate
with our company, engage in conversation with NetApp leaders and employees,
our customers, and partners. Participate in our passion to go further,
faster. Join now at
www.netapp.com/us/communities.
For more information about NetApp virtualization solutions, visit
www.netapp.com/us/solutions/infrastructure/virtualization/server/.
For more information about NetApp storage efficiency technologies, visit
www.netapp.com/us/company/leadership/storage-efficiency/html.
For more information about Trace3, visit
www.trace3.com.
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that
accelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost efficiency.
Discover NetApp's passion for helping companies around the world go
further, faster at
www.netapp.com.
NetApp, the NetApp logo, and Go further, faster are trademarks or
registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other
countries. VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. All other
brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective holders and should be treated as such.
Contact Information: Press Contact:
Nathan Phillips
NetApp
(408) 822-7284
nathan.phillips@netapp.com