Cegeka taps IBM Flash for faster cloud solutions

ARMONK, USA: As the rapid expansion of the digital universe continues unabated, the demand for faster, easier access to that information via the cloud builds. In order to provide both to its growing client base across Europe, managed services provider, Cegeka, turned to IBM storage virtualization and Flash technologies.

Cegeka provides private cloud solutions, such as Infrastructure as a Service, Software as a Service, telephony services, and more. At the heart of its latest infrastructure innovation is the IBM FlashSystem 820 storage system. The all-Flash appliance, which is 20-times faster than traditional, refrigerator-sized hard drive systems, can store up to 24 terabytes of data in a unit the size of a pizza box.

Cegeka had initially deployed the systems to speed the performance of SAP applications for a specific client. Though the solution improved the performance of the SAP jobs by a factor of 10 and increased end-user response times by 3 times, the IBM FlashSystem provided even greater benefits to Cegeka.

Flash is a re-writable memory technology that can speed application performance and response times in servers and storage systems from milliseconds to microseconds- orders of magnitude faster. Because it contains no moving parts, Flash is more reliable and energy efficient than spinning hard drives. The company's storage infrastructure is built on IBM XIV high-end disk systems and IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) virtualization software, making integrating the Flash systems easy.