Releases

posted on 25 February 2008 18:03

Fremont, CA, February 25, 2008. 3PAR® (NYSE Arca: PAR), the leading global provider of utility storage, announced today that Freudenberg IT (FIT), a subsidiary of the Freudenberg Group, has chosen 3PAR to replace a traditional storage vendor in its datacenters.

According to the Freudenberg Group, 3PAR Utility Storage is a perfect match for FIT's needs and the Freudenberg Group's affinity for deploying cutting edge technologies. The 3PAR InServ® Storage Server is a highly virtualized tiered-storage array that offers massive scalability, performance, and connectivity within a single system. With the InServ Storage Server, FIT can add capacity at any time--seamlessly--while the 3PAR InForm® OS makes management of the storage system simple and efficient. The 3PAR InServ Storage Server uses massively parallel and fine-grained striping of data across internal resources for the purpose of maintaining high and predictable service levels for all workload types, even as the use of the system grows.

"3PAR is very innovative compared to traditional storage vendors," said Oliver Koban, Manager Business Unit Hosting International at FIT. "3PAR's high-performance, reliable, and proven technology has increased the simplicity and efficiency of our production environment."

Headquartered in Weinheim, near Frankfurt, Germany, the Freudenberg Group is comprised of thirteen business groups and boasts approximately 33,000 employees in 53 countries and more than five billion euros in annual sales. FIT became a subsidiary of the Freudenberg Group in 1995 with a mission to fulfill the Group's IT needs while also selling services outside the Group. Today, FIT has become an international, full-service provider successfully implementing, optimizing, and operating IT systems within Freudenberg's subsidiaries throughout Europe, the U.S., and Asia. With over thirty years of experience with SAP, FIT is highly specialized and is one of nine certified SAP partners.

Prior to purchasing 3PAR Utility Storage, FIT was dissatisfied with one of their traditional storage suppliers, citing performance issues and poor reliability as the cause. FIT decided to replace this vendor with 3PAR Utility Storage, starting first with the InServ® E200 Storage Server. The InServ E200 is designed to deliver all the benefits of the 3PAR Utility Storage platform in a scaled-down architecture and to be ideal for mid-size deployments. FIT has since deployed another four InServ arrays, bringing their total 3PAR deployment to five arrays--four in Germany and one in the U.S. Each InServ took less than half a day to install--an extremely simple process that did not require additional services. All InServs are configured with 3PAR Thin Provisioning and thin copy technology supplied by 3PAR Virtual Copy as well as 3PAR Dynamic Optimization for on-demand modification of data service levels. By using 3PAR's Fast RAID 5, FIT also benefits from hardware acceleration that enables the business to achieve performance comparable to that of traditional RAID 1 mirroring yet with a 66 to 88% improvement in storage utilization.

The InServs at FIT's datacenters are connected to IBM AIX® and Windows® hosts running SAP, VMware®, and database applications including Microsoft® SQL Server™.

"3PAR Utility Storage represents a great investment for us since we can implement storage virtualization for our Windows and VMware platforms internationally from one central point, and without any hardware or software upgrade," said Mr. Koban. "We have also found the 3PAR arrays require much fewer management resources since the time and effort to provision storage is negligible as compared to traditional storage systems."

"We are pleased to see service providers like Freudenberg IT gain business agility while reducing costs," said David Scott, President and CEO at 3PAR. "This is a great example of the impact that 3PAR Utility Storage has had with our German customers."

About Freudenberg IT
Freudenberg IT (FIT) provides IT services to small and medium-sized businesses, specializing in automotive supply, discrete manufacturing, logistics providers, roll based industry and technical trade. As an international full-service IT provider, FIT implements, optimizes, and operates IT systems in SAP environments. The Adicom Software Suite represents FIT's own MES solution (Manufacturing Execution System). FIT has twelve subsidiaries throughout Europe, the US and Asia. FIT is a successful IT spin-off of the Freudenberg Group and achieves about two thirds of its sales on the external market.