XIV provides a powerful, always-up private storage cloud for Tallink Group’s CRM and other applications. Visit http://ibm.co/Pv0O89 to know about IBM XIV Storage Systems.

1. IBM XIV Storage System series Travel and Transportation
Case Study
Tallink Group sails full
steam ahead with
IBM XIV Storage
XIV provides a powerful, always-up private storage
cloud for the company’s CRM and other applications
Tallink Group is the leading provider of transportation services, as well as
Overview leisure and business travel in the Baltic Sea region. Carrying approxi-
mately nine million passengers each year on seven routes, the group
The need
has invested more than one billion Euros in new ships over the last
Tallink Group needed an easy to deploy, eight years, amassing a fleet of 19 state-of-the-art vessels. Tallink Group
easily managed, low cost of ownership
storage solution that would ensure high also operates five hotels and offers onboard entertainment and tax-free
performance and 24×7 availability for its shopping.
business-critical online booking systems.
The solution With its business growing rapidly, Tallink Group needed to ensure
continued excellence in customer service. Peter Roose, Sales and
Deployed two IBM® XIV® Storage
Systems in a private cloud serving Marketing Director, explains: “To maintain our competitive edge, we
business units in three countries. Used are constantly thinking about what our customers want and need. Our
built-in XIV tools for rapid migration customers are moving towards booking at the last minute, so our online
and thin provisioning for dramatic
capacity savings. reservation system needs to be flexible enough to handle that. Reliability
is also critical: even one day of downtime for the booking systems would
The benefit be absolutely catastrophic.”
Higher performance and lower latency for
key business systems; nondisruptive
The company’s previous storage system was at the end of its warranty and
migration; low administration and
cost transparency optimize TCO; beginning to cause performance problems at peak times—typically, when
thin provisioning saves up to 50 percent overnight loads to the data warehouses overran their allotted time. With
on disk usage. performance and ease of management as its key criteria, Tallink Group
evaluated four vendors for its new strategic storage platform.
After a three-day proof of concept at the IBM Executive Briefing Center
in Montpellier, the ferry company selected the IBM XIV Storage System.
Tallink Group deployed two XIV systems—for business continuity
and growth. “Our goal in the IT department is to serve the business
without any restrictions,” comments Toomas Suurmets, Manager, IT

2. IBM XIV Storage System series Travel and Transportation
Case Study
Infrastructure Department. “When we implemented our new online
reservation system, data storage requirements began to grow rapidly, and
“Hands-on testing proved we also needed more capacity and performance to support our new busi-
to us that XIV really ness analytics and CRM systems. With XIV, storage no longer places
constraints on business growth—we don’t even think about it anymore!
offers the performance We also spend far less time managing storage, because the XIV interface
and functionality that is so intuitive.”
IBM promised. At pres-
Smooth-sailing performance and an
ent, we don’t need to
administration breeze
think about storage per- Says Suurmets: “The hands-on testing proved to us that XIV really offers
formance at all, because the performance and functionality that IBM promised.”
we are nowhere near the “For our business, real-time processing is critical,” says Suurmets.
limits of the XIV. We “For example, more than 1,000 passengers must be checked
also spend far less time in a couple of hours before each ship departs. With our schedule,
processing peaks occur many times each day. Equally, we have a small
managing storage, IT team, so it’s crucial to minimize the administrative workload.”
because the XIV interface
Tallink Group found that its previous storage system fell short of docu-
is so intuitive.” mentation claims of 24,000 IOPS. To ensure adequate performance, the
company had limited itself to using only 10 percent of the system’s capac-
—Toomas Suurmets, Manager, IT Infrastructure
ity. Now, with the XIV system, the Tallink IT team reports consistent
Department, Tallink Group
performance of 60,000 IOPS, even with their most demanding databases.
Powerful private cloud for strategic gains
Tallink Group is using XIV storage to optimize performance in their
virtualized environment, which currently includes 300 VMware vSphere
virtual servers. The XIV arrays act as a private storage cloud for the
Tallink Group’s businesses across Estonia, Sweden and Finland, centraliz-
ing use of application software for dispersed end users while reducing
administration. Business-critical applications on the XIV-VMware cloud
include online reservation systems running in an Oracle Real Application
Cluster database, Microsoft SQL Server data warehouses, Sybase IQ for
business intelligence and Microsoft Exchange Server for email.
2

3. IBM XIV Storage System series Travel and Transportation
Case Study
Liivo Liivrand, IT Infrastructure Architect, explains: “We also needed
IBM solution components: this storage system upgrade to better serve our internal customers—our
partners at agencies. Providing faster response times enables them to do
Hardware
their job faster.” The private cloud serves this goal. Liivrand notes: “Our
● IBM® XIV® Storage System environment is essentially a big cloud for our internal customers.”
XIV Functionality in Use
● Data migration
“Thanks to the XIV system, our key applications now have faster
● Snapshots performance and lower latency,” says Liivrand. “Simple administration
● Thin provisioning gives us more time to focus on other issues, and the XIV systems are
also highly resilient. If a disk fails, the solution automatically distributes
all of its data across the remaining disks within about 30 minutes.”
“We use XIV built-in
Simplicity and low TCO with built-in tools
thin provisioning for The team found the XIV data migration tool very simple to use,
about 75 percent of our enabling them to migrate with very little downtime. Liivrand adds:
“We use XIV thin provisioning for about 75 percent of our total capacity;
total capacity, which has this has reduced our storage requirements by 40 to 50 percent.”
reduced our storage
requirements by 40 to Tallink Group uses XIV snapshot functionality to provide its software
development team with high-speed, nondisruptive copies of production
50 percent.” systems. The XIV replication tools will enable Tallink Group to mirror
its production systems at the storage level if it chooses to move away from
—Liivo Liivrand, IT Infrastructure Architect, the current database-level replication.
Tallink Group
Says Suurmets: “The XIV systems come with all software functionality at
no extra charge, making our cost calculations very easy. From the TCO
IT Environment: point of view, the main benefits are the low administration costs and the
Operating Systems transparency of costs over the purchased three-year support period.”
● Microsoft Windows Server
Easy scaling for business analytics
Databases The XIV systems have already met Tallink Group’s goals of high per-
● Oracle 11g formance and 24×7 availability for its online reservation systems, and will
● Oracle Real Application Clusters
scale easily to meet its storage requirements over the next couple of years.
● Microsoft SQL Server data warehouse
As the group ramps up its use of business analytics, the XIV systems will
Applications also play a key role.
● Online reservations system
● Customer Relationship Management “Data management is an important part of what we do in sales and
(CRM)
● Sybase IQ for business intelligence
marketing,” says Roose. “To guide our daily business decisions, it’s vital to
● Microsoft Exchange Server have up-to-the-minute data, and to make sure that the information flows
continuously. XIV is an extremely important part of making sure that we
Virtualization
have the data for our CRM applications.”
● VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1
3

4. For more information
Contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit
“To guide our daily busi- us at: ibm.com/storage/disk/xiv
ness decisions, it’s vital to
Additionally, financing solutions from IBM Global Financing can enable
have up-to-the-minute
effective cash management, protection from technology obsolescence,
data, and to make sure improved total cost of ownership and return on investment. Also, our
that the information Global Asset Recovery Services help address environmental concerns with
new, more energy-efficient solutions. For more information on
flows continuously. IBM Global Financing, visit: ibm.com/financing
XIV is an extremely
important part of
making sure that we
have the data for our
CRM applications.”
—Peter Roose, Sales and Marketing Director,
Tallink Group
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