In order to provide a wider range of products and services to its ever-expanding customer base, Mitchell 1 requires significantly greater storage functionality and efficiencies. That’s the reason the company has replaced its storage area network (SAN) with the Hitachi Network Storage Controller model NSC55, from Hitachi Data Systems. The new system will help drastically reduce production cycle times, manage aggressive data storage growth and lower operational costs.

“The Hitachi Network Storage Controller was perfect for meeting our continually expanding data storage needs.” said Mark Zecca, Mitchell 1’s senior director of IT. “We knew our growth and service issues could be solved with Hitachi’s virtualization and tiered storage technology.”

With a broad range of customers, Mitchell 1 strives to meet the ever-morphing informational requirements in the marketplace.

“We’re in a different business now and we are developing and packaging information via software and digital formats to manage most aspects of the repair business, including resource planning, inventory, financial transactions and labor estimates.” said Zecca.

Mitchell 1’s networked environment coupled with digital delivery of products and services is helping customers gain information faster, which in turn can help them better diagnose and estimate repairs.

Mitchell 1 implemented a tiered storage area network to consolidate and unify data across the enterprise. Designed to easily manage Mitchell 1’s growing storage capacity, the Hitachi Network Storage Controller model NSC55 exemplifies high performance and availability while delivering advanced management and replication features.

Mitchell 1 is also utilizing Hitachi software to integrate and virtualize its remaining servers, as well as to create non-disruptive full-data volume copies of Mitchell 1’s software development data and mission-critical files for fast and full recovery if ever needed.

“We have the right data in the right place so we can now process data six times faster than before.” said Zecca. “What used to take 36 hours for production data copies now takes five minutes with the Hitachi architecture.” said Randy Bislew, IT operations manager for Mitchell 1. “Our data storage volume has grown nearly 700 percent, our data acquisition 300 percent, and we went from three different storage administrations down to one administrator who easily manages everything.”

About the Author

Jill Schafer

Jill Schafer is the Marketing Communication Manager at Mitchell 1 and has over 20 years of marketing experience with high-technology organizations, including over 10 years in the automotive information industry.