Global Automotive Supplier Deploys NetApp Storage Infrastructure
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--June 18, 2003--Network Appliance, Inc. , a leading provider of enterprise network storage solutions, today announced that Hella KG Hueck & Co., a worldwide supplier of technology and electronics for the automobile industry, has chosen Network Appliance as its enterprise network storage platform to consolidate and simplify its business-critical SAP systems. Through the deployment of NetApp storage solutions, Hella will lower its overall storage TCO, resulting in significant operational and IT administration cost savings as well as an increase in company productivity.
Hella wanted to maximize data availability and reliability with a centralized enterprise storage solution for its business-critical applications. NetApp was able to architect an adaptive IT infrastructure based on powerful storage systems to enhance the sharing of data-intensive enterprise systems including SAP R/3 (ERP, Advanced Planning Optimizer (APO) and B2B procurement) and primary AIX and Linux production systems, for use by over 1000 concurrent users.
NetApp storage is also a critical component of Hella's recently deployed FlexFrame architecture, a new solution from Fujitsu-Siemens, developed in close cooperation with NetApp and SAP. FlexFrame delivers unmatched flexibility, availability, and simplicity in managing the entire SAP landscape, and allows SAP application services to be dynamically allocated between the available servers while storage requirements are cloned or added as required.
Hella has deployed multiple terabytes of Network Appliance(TM) FAS900 unified storage systems and has also streamlined its data backup and recovery processes by installing NetApp solutions including NearStore(TM) systems and NetApp Snapshot(TM), SnapMirror(R), SnapRestore(R), and MetroCluster(R) software for data protection and disaster recovery.
"As a global leader in automotive technology, we wanted to bring our products and services to market faster, better utilize our existing enterprise applications, and eliminate duplication of engineering effort," said Stefan Osterhage, CIO at Hella. "To accomplish this goal, we needed to consolidate our storage infrastructure into a simpler and more manageable environment, without affecting application performance or availability of our business-critical systems."
"The deployment at Hella is among the world's largest NetApp deployments on SAP with extremely high performance, availability, and management criteria," said Mark Santora, senior vice president of marketing at Network Appliance. "By combining NetApp storage solutions and NetApp data management software, Hella is able to rapidly store and access the vast amounts of data needed to provide maximum operational efficiency, increased uptime, and a lower total cost of ownership."
About Hella Group
Automotive lighting, electronics, complete vehicle modules, and the automotive components aftermarket are the core competence areas of the automotive supplier Hella KG Hueck & Co. with its group headquarters in Lippstadt. The current turnover of the Hella Group is more than 2.9 billion euros. In terms of turnover, Hella is among the top 100 German industrial companies. 22,500 people are employed in 58 manufacturing facilities, production subsidiaries, and joint-venture companies around the world. All the world's leading automobile manufacturers are Hella customers.
About Network Appliance
Network Appliance is a world leader in unified storage solutions for today's data-intensive enterprise. Since its inception in 1992, Network Appliance has delivered technology, product, and partner firsts that continue to drive the evolution of storage. Information about Network Appliance solutions and services is available at www.netapp.com.
NetApp, SnapMirror, MetroCluster, and SnapRestore are registered trademarks and Network Appliance, Snapshot, NearStore, and The evolution of storage are trademarks of Network Appliance Inc. in the United States and other countries. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG in Germany and several other countries. Fujitsu-Siemens is a registered trademark of Fujitsu-Siemens. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.