Since earning a reputation for highly detailed fire insurance maps more than a century ago, Sanborn has provided mapping services that today include the collection and compilation of geographic- and location-based data, or geospatial information. Initially, Sanborn chose BlueArc technology to consolidate and simplify storage infrastructure. Now, a second BlueArc Titan server and Fibre Channel storage help Sanborn take advantage of unsurpassed performance and capacity to boost productivity. Sanborn runs approximately 200 processes concurrently and around the clock, and has doubled the number of technicians performing error correction because the storage infrastructure can support the activity.
"Sanborn stakes its reputation on client satisfaction, and while we didn't want to pass up a high-profile project for a leading search engine, we needed to be certain that we could meet their requirements for both quality and speed," said Doyle Heisler, IT director, Sanborn. "We already knew the kind of IOPS we could expect from the Titan server, and Fibre Channel let us make the most of it -- a powerful combination that meant our technicians have become incredibly productive."
One BlueArc Titan server manages the initial transfer of data from aerial surveyors' cameras to SATA disk archives. The second BlueArc Titan server manages Fibre Channel storage for simultaneous, out-of-sequence data access as technicians correct images to produce richly detailed, extremely accurate maps. A pilot deployment of BlueArc and Fibre Channel storage proved so powerful that technicians were able to rectify 15,000 images in a 24-hour period using a pilot deployment. In contrast, technicians typically processed 1,000 images in the same period with image data stored on SATA disks.
Sanborn's dramatic gains in productivity correlate to a rise in repeat business from clients such as Maricopa County in Arizona, which awarded Sanborn a new contract based on performance. Heisler said that industry trends reflect growth in project complexity, even as project timelines get shorter and shorter. He says, "If we can't meet deadlines, we certainly can't expand our business."
About BlueArc
BlueArc is a leading provider of high-performance unified network storage systems to enterprise markets, as well as data intensive markets, such as electronic discovery, entertainment, federal government, higher education, Internet services, oil and gas and life sciences. Our products support both network attached storage, or NAS, and storage area network, or SAN, services on a converged network storage platform.
We enable companies to expand the ways they explore, discover, research, create, process and innovate in data-intensive environments. Our products replace complex and performance-limited products with high performance, scalable and easy to use systems capable of handling the most data intensive applications and environments. Further, we believe that our energy efficient design and our products' ability to consolidate legacy storage infrastructures, dramatically increases storage utilization rates and reduces our customers' total cost of ownership. Information about BlueArc solutions and services can be found at http://www.bluearc.com/.
Contact: Louis Gray BlueArc Corporation (408) 576-6684 Email Contact
