HPE 3PAR StoreServ | IT case study | Clayton Utz | HPE

HPE 3PAR StoreServ | IT case study | Clayton Utz | HPE

Case Study
Objective
To accommodate rapid data growth
and stringent regulatory requirements
with simplified, cost effective and easily
administered storage technology
Approach
Researched storage marketplace with
partners, Lynx and Vintage, before
selecting and deploying HPE 3PAR
StoreServ, HPE StoreVirtual and
HPE StoreOnce solutions
Clayton Utz achieves
information security and
data protection goals
HPE 3PAR StoreServ meets data security
needs for Australian law firm
IT Matters
• Eliminated the use of valuable IT
resources on mundane storage issues
• Delivered efficient storage solution with
accurate timeframes
• Ensured simple administration of
rapid growth in data for the firm
and its clients
Business Matters
• Supported firm’s own business
requirements for cost effective
data storage
• Delivered information security and data
protection assurance to clients
• Ensured simplicity and speed for clients
to access firm’s professional advice
Law firm Clayton Utz was
facing an end-of-life issue
with its existing storage
technology solution and a
threat to the firm’s ability
to meet its clients’ needs
for information security
and data protection.
HPE 3PAR StoreServ was
able to simplify, automate
and expedite the storage
management of the
unstoppable growth
rate of data.
Challenge
Adverse risks of unstoppable data explosion
Information security and data protection is an
issue of increasing seriousness for commercial
and government organizations alike. The
tremendous explosion in data volumes,
essential for the conduct of business, has
made its safekeeping a critical and nonnegotiable reality.
The value of the data is compromised if it is
mislaid, hard to retrieve, or costly to store. A
lament common among many organizations,
large or small, is that, faced with the
unstoppable increase in data, storage capacity
often falls short of acceptable levels.
The risks and repercussions of this are slower
transaction times, threats to timely decision
making, greater potential for errors, and
higher IT administration and support costs.
Case study
Clayton Utz
Industry
Legal
Page 2
“Hewlett Packard Enterprise is a good technology company that takes a
three to five year view. As a result its storage solutions have seen improved
performance, resiliency, capacity and functionality. This was the vision and
roadmap we were looking for to satisfy our need for a solution with the
potential for even further strengthening evolution.”
— Garry Clarke, IT director, Clayton Utz
For the legal industry an extra dimension of
risk is added whereby a law firm has to store,
secure and manage not only its own data but
also that which is entrusted to it by its clients.
Clayton Utz is a leading Australian law
firm, celebrating 175 years since its founder
became the first Australian to be admitted to
the New South Wales Supreme Court. Today,
Clayton Utz employs 1,450 professionals
across six offices in Australia. Its client list
includes many of the top 100 Australian
companies as well as more than many Federal
and State government departments, agencies,
and organizations. The sectors it represents
include finance, defense, infrastructure,
utilities and construction.
Recently Clayton Utz faced a decisive issue.
Its storage area network (SAN) solution had
served it well. However, with six locations
each handling storage backup and tape
libraries proving increasingly difficult and
time consuming to recover data, the firm’s
IT executives anticipated a looming
technology “end-of-life” issue. The firm’s
capacity to maintain high level performance,
to upgrade, or to control administrative
costs was under threat.
This issue was made more challenging by
the requirements of the Clayton Utz client
base for absolute data security.
Garry Clarke, IT director, Clayton Utz recalls
meetings between the law firm and its clients’
IT specialists: “Our clients understandably
placed great emphasis on this issue.
The need to supply hardware encrypted
storage capability was becoming nonnegotiable. It was a dialogue. We were
unified in our quest for information security
and data protection.”
Andrew Fisher, head of infrastructure
and data security, notes that Clayton Utz
has recently become the first top tier
Australian law firm to receive certification
for meeting the international information
security management system standard, ISO
27001:2013. He says: “Client concerns majored
on the phenomenon of data explosion and
the regulatory requirements they had to meet
in terms of data retention and data recovery.
Not only now, but likely regulatory demands
that would undoubtedly evolve in future.”
Solution
Critical criteria of storage solutions
Clarke pinpoints the challenge the company
faced in determining the next evolution of its
storage technology solution: “It had to have
longevity, backed by the right road maps
that would point the way for the inevitable
technology upgrades. The criteria were critical
– robust performance, low cost, single-pane
administration and an assurance that the
solution would attract enough support in
the marketplace.
Case study
Clayton Utz
Industry
Legal
Page 3
“It was important the storage asset we
selected would be capable of saving us
money over its life. We were not about to tip
money into a solution that lacked support
or could not deliver a high quality long-life
performance. We didn’t want to blindside
ourselves because we had specific virtual
desktop infrastructure workloads.”
Clayton Utz worked with channel partner
and distributor, Lynx Technologies, in
assessing the storage marketplace. “We
have great confidence in the capability of
Lynx Technologies, an organization that
understands this market segment,” explains
Fisher. Clayton Utz decided to deploy an
HPE 3PAR StoreServ, HPE StoreOnce and
HPE StoreVirtual solution. “We have a long
and strong relationship with Hewlett Packard
Enterprise. It is a good technology company
that takes a three to five year view. We were
invited to the HPE Storage Leadership
Council and encouraged to give feedback
about its products and services. It is good to
see many examples where HPE was clearly
listening to our feedback,” adds Fisher.
Clarke recalls the decision process: “Lynx
reinforced the opinion that HPE has made
material R&D investments to ensure that
it has delivered ongoing enhancements to
its HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7000 series and
StoreVirtual 4000 series platforms. As a
result these solutions have seen improved
performance, resiliency, capacity and
functionality.
This was the vision and roadmap we
were looking for to satisfy our need for a
solution with the potential for even further
strengthening evolution.
“Both our own employees and those within
our client base are increasingly using laptops,
personal digital assistants and mobile
phones to access their companies’ data. The
HPE 3PAR StoreServ built-in autonomic
management capability allows an instant
response to new workload demands without
troubling the administrator. HPE 3PAR
StoreServ will be eventually used across most
of our applications - however the two first
use applications are our e-discovery and
forensic toolsets and close behind will be our
document management and email systems.”
Benefit
Enhancing the virtual storage
environment
Fisher says HPE StoreVirtual provides a
virtualized pool of storage resources to deliver
storage functionality that enhances virtual
environments: “It simplifies management,
reduces costs and is easy to deploy, grow and
maintain, HPE StoreVirtual Storage ensures
critical business data remains available for us
and our clients.”
The choice of the HPE StoreOnce solution
enables Clayton Utz to manage its entire
backup environment from a single console.
Case study
Clayton Utz
Industry
Legal
Customer at a glance
Application
Enterprise and cloud storage
Hardware
• HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7200
• HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7400
• HPE StoreVirtual 4500
“Client concerns majored on the phenomenon of data
explosion and regulatory requirements they had to meet
in terms of data retention and data recovery.”
— Andrew Fisher, head of infrastructure and data security technology, Clayton Utz
• HPE StoreVirtual 4700
• HPE StoreOnce
Fisher comments: “It is a great product that
we use to replicate our business data backups
within our private cloud. An important benefit
is the assurance that all backups are more
readily available now they are online. They
are also more reliable. Unlike tape, there is no
danger of being prone to errors, we now have
no tape media in our environment.”
HPE StoreOnce uses a single deduplication
engine across the entire backup deployment.
Fisher notes: “With this deduplication
technology we use less physical storage
and the replication and restore rates are
lower. This delivers us reduced costs,
lower overhead and minimizes the
administration workload.”
There are two dimensions to the data storage
landscape for Clayton Utz. Clarke describes
it this way: “In the first instance, we must
support our own business requirements,
then those of our clients. We have frequent
discussions with the technical counterparts
within our clients. We share our thinking
and positioning of the technology vision
we are able to deliver thanks to HPE’s
storage capabilities.
“Our clients’ priority requirements are
simplicity and speed in capturing, securing
and controlling the explosion in data that is a
daily fact of their business life. They seek from
us a high level of security of their data and
want more mobile access to the professional
advice we give them.”
Clayton Utz also wanted a solution that would
seamlessly interact with the firm’s existing
VMware environment, adds Fisher. “HPE
is efficient in delivering the solution within
accurate timeframes which means we can
respond to high demands for storage needs
with great confidence and without carrying
storage overhead costs.
“In fact I don’t have to think too much about
HPE because I only need to invest the
minimum time in worrying about storage.
The infrastructure is fully supported
under an HPE technical support contract.
HPE automatically keeps us in the picture
on security feature updates. HPE’s critical
support structure eliminates the mundane
IT operational tasks that would otherwise
tie up my resources.”
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4AA6-2522ENW, December 2015