Textron

Solution Textron shifted to hybrid cloud storage using Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure Storerooms.

Reduce storage costs by IIS$2. 5 million annually Gain storage scalability Improve data availability “We’ve reduced storage costs by 80 percent, or $2. 5 million, by moving data into Microsoft Azure using Storerooms, which helped us meet our targeted IT budget reductions. ” David Gin, Director of Architecture, Textron Information Services, Textron In response to increasing storage costs, Textron shifted to Microsoft hybrid cloud storage based on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure Storerooms.

By using cloud- based storage, Textron will reduce annual storage costs by US$2.

5 million and gain rapid and cost-effective storage scalability. Textron has also gained a cost-effective disaster recovery solution that shortens data access time from 72 hours to minutes. Situation Founded in 1923, Providence, Rhode Island-based Textron is known around the world for its powerful aircraft brands, such as Bell Helicopter and Cessna Aircraft Company.

But it also makes golf cars, wire and cable installation systems, turf-care products, automotive parts, and military intelligence products. Textron not only spans multiple industries, but it is also known as a pioneer of the diversified business model.

Textron is a US$12. 1 billion company with 32,000 employees. Its global network of businesses includes Bell Helicopter, E-Z-GO, Greenly, Jacobsen, Equate, Textron Aviation, Textron Financial, and Textron Systems. Like many companies, Textron is looking for ways to improve services while lowering IT costs. We had a sizeable IT cost reduction to go after?about 15 percent of our budget?and we knew that storage was a large portion of our midrange costs,” says David Gin, Director of Architecture, Textron Information Service at Textron.

“However, our storage was growing at a rate of more than 30 percent a year. Many organic business expansion. ” Textron Information Services wanted to support the expanding storage needs of the business by ensuring that Textron was getting the best possible value from its storage expenditures and that it was using the most innovative technologies. We had data that was past its useful life taking up space on all our core storage platforms, and we wanted to move this older data to a cheaper storage solution,” ads Less Rowland, Chief Architect of Architecture, Textron Information Services at Textron. “We wanted to ensure that each type of data was stored as cost-effectively as possible. ” The search for a cost-effective storage solution led Textron to cloud-based options.

Because it was an active supplier to the defense industry, Textron could not move to a cloud-only storage strategy because of data security requirements to keep certain data on-premises.

However, it could move to a hybrid cloud storage solution. “Two years ago, we wouldn’t even be having a conversation about cloud data storage cause it was deemed too risky for a company in our industry,” Gin says. “But with all the advances in cloud technology and the many companies making the move to the cloud, we began to seriously look at putting not only data but applications in the cloud. ” Choose Federal-Certified Solution After narrowing its search to Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, Textron selected hybrid cloud storage from Microsoft.

The solution was based on Microsoft Azure Storerooms cloud-integrated storage, an on-premises enterprise storage area network (SAN) from Microsoft that interoperable with Microsoft Azure to provide a hybrid loud storage solution for primary, backup, archive, and disaster recovery. Microsoft Azure is a cloud platform that provides on-demand compute, storage, content delivery, and networking capabilities from Microsoft decanters. “We liked the simplicity of Storerooms,” Rowland says. Amazon’s solution Just didn’t have the features and enterprise storage capabilities that Storerooms offered, nor did it have the level of cloud and on-premises integration that Microsoft provided. We didn’t like the idea of piecing together different products.

” Another key factor for Textron was the ability to meet industry regulations. Weeks earlier, in September 2013, Microsoft Azure had become the first public cloud platform to receive a Provisional Authority to Operate from the Federal Joint Authorization Board CAB) for both its infrastructure-as-a-service (alas) and platform- as-a-service (Pass) offerings.

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (Federal) is a US government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud program, consisting of the chief information officers of the Department of Defense, he Department of Homeland Security, and the US General Services Administration. Deploy Hybrid Cloud Storage Solution Textron purchased four Storerooms units and IIS$300,OHO worth of Microsoft Azure Storage.

Microsoft Services Consulting was onsite to help with the first implementation, but Gin and his team were able to do most of the work unassisted. “It was an incredibly easy process to set up Storerooms, set up our Azure account, configure the storage, and bring it online,” he says.

Textron is using Storerooms and Microsoft Azure as primary storage for all unstructured data. Storerooms employs a three-tiered architecture whereby it puts more frequently used data on high-speed local drives and less frequently used and older data on less expensive cloud storage (Microsoft Azure).

By the end of 2014, Textron will have about 300 terabytes of data in Azure. Benefits By adopting a hybrid cloud storage solution from Microsoft, Textron will be able to reduce storage costs by $2. 5 million annually and gain storage scalability.

Textron also experiences faster data recovery in the event of a server or decanter failure. Reduce Storage Costs by $2. Million Annually, Increase Scalability By shifting data storage to Storerooms and Microsoft Azure, Textron was able to easily meet its storage cost reduction goals. We’ve reduced storage costs by 80 percent, or $2. 5 million, by moving data into Microsoft Azure using Storerooms, which helped us meet our targeted IT budget reductions,” Gin says. Textron can also scale storage more easily to help IT keep pace with the increasing velocity of the business.

Improve Data Availability In its previous IT environment, Textron Information Services performed full backups ND then replicated data to its disaster recovery location.

In a disaster recovery scenario, it could take 48 to 72 hours to bring systems back online. By using multiple Storerooms units in a disaster recovery configuration, access to data is nearly immediate. “There was no way we could deliver disaster recovery at the size or scale that Microsoft can,” Rowland says. “We could never manage the capital investment or the processes that Microsoft has in place.

We’re happy to let Microsoft innovate and bring new decanter service offerings to the table so that we can focus on running