London-based market-leading media intelligence provider Gorkana Group obtains 65% improvement in Oracle database performance and cuts operational costs by 3.5 time s by implemementing a Nimble Storage Solution from Krome Technologies.
Gorkana Group provides media intelligence, accurate data and analysis, high-quality networking, and premium customer services to over 35,000 communications professionals around the world. Gorkana’s valuable services enable its clients to accurately plan campaigns, develop media relationships, analyse mainstream and social media coverage and effectively manage brand reputations.
The Requirement
Gorkana had been relying on a NetApp MetroCluster storage environment for several years. However they reached a point where they needed to increase capacity in their existing environment or switch solution entirely. The Head of Operations and the rest of his team at Gorkana thoroughly evaluated various storage alternatives including NetApp, HP, Dell, Whiptail, EMC, and several all-flash solutions. Whilst evaluating alternative solutions, Gorkana’s Head of Operations also sought advice from Gorkana’s trusted technology consulting services provider, Krome Technologies. “We always touch base with Krome, especially when making major changes to our IT environment,” noted the Head of Operations. “We trust their recommendations and feedback on technology. Krome agreed that the Nimble Storage platform would be a very good fit for our environment and that it should be a leading candidate in our evaluation.”
The Solution
Gorkana ran a three-month proof of concept (POC) on the Nimble arrays.In addition to running its own evaluation of the Nimble arrays, Gorkana also enlisted the help of independent testing company Xynomix to verify the results of the POC. As a result of this Gorkana made the decision to purchase two Nimble CS440 arrays for its mission-critical Oracle database environment, two Nimble CS420 for the company filesystems, and an additional Nimble CS220 for other Gorkana services.
The Oracle database now performs 60-65% faster on Nimble than it did on the NetApp-based storage. In addition to the performance improvements, Gorkana achieved a 3.5x annual savings in its IT operational budget for storage by moving to the Nimble arrays. Gorkana are very impressed with Nimble, “Nimble has more than lived up to our expectations. It absolutely meets our requirements for scalability, capacity, and performance – and we aren’t even ‘stretching it’ yet.”
Throughout the process, accredited Nimble partner Krome Technologies worked with Gorkana to ensure a smooth transition to the new storage platform, negotiating solution commercials and pulling together the appropriate technical resources:
“We have a trusted relationship with Krome, we’ve been more than happy with their advice and services on past projects. Krome’s relationship with Nimble was key in the discussions around commercials and I can’t fault the integration of systems, Krome played an integral part in getting everything signed up and del ivered to the Gorkana Group.” Head of IT Operations, Gorkana Group.
