Top NASCAR Sponsor Recharges With EMC; Interstate Batteries Deploys EMC E-Infostructure To Deliver B2B Services to Growing Distribution Network

26 October 2000

Top NASCAR Sponsor Recharges With EMC; Interstate Batteries Deploys EMC E-Infostructure To Deliver B2B Services to Growing Distribution Network

    HOPKINTON, Mass.--Oct. 26, 2000--Bobby Labonte is feeling the heat - he's the top driver in this year's NASCAR Winston Cup series. All eyes are on Bobby as NASCAR racing has become the largest and the fastest-growing spectator sport in the U.S.-- with the Winston Cup races attracting larger crowds than the Super Bowl, World Series and the NBA Finals, combined. Interstate Batteries, sponsor of Bobby's pacesetting car and America's #1 seller of replacement batteries, also is under pressure to win as it recharges its business model with an EMC E-Infostructure to meet huge market demand.
    "The quality of our product, American's passion for NASCAR racing, and a booming economy all have contributed to a massive up-tick in our sales," said Merv Tarde, Interstate Batteries' Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer. "To make sure we don't miss this growth opportunity, we are significantly revamping the way we do business. At the heart of this change is our transition from server-based distributed storage to a centralized EMC E-Infostructure. With EMC at the helm, we can quickly bring large amounts of new storage online, eliminating the drain on IT resources and system downtime we experienced before."
    Interstate Batteries' new infrastructure includes EMC Symmetrix(R) Enterprise Storage for its PeopleSoft Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Oracle database and data warehouse applications, and EMC CLARiiON(R) FC4500 storage for Microsoft Exchange electronic mail. EMC is the storage source for Interstate Batteries' Sun and Compaq Windows NT servers.
    "EMC E-Infostructure gives us centralized storage management over a much broader range of applications," said Tarde. "EMC's advanced software for both Symmetrix and CLARiiON provides a powerful solution for managing storage much more efficiently than was previously possible. As our storage capacities shoot upwards, these efficiencies will translate into more significant cost savings for our business."
    Based in Dallas, Interstate Batteries also is deploying EMC to roll out a new web-enabled infrastructure to provide its business with up-to-date information about sales, customers and internal operations.
    "24x7 access to information is the most critical requirement of our new B2B infrastructure," said Tarde. "Without it, our distributors would be operating in the dark, which would have immediate negative consequences for the nearly 200,000 retail accounts we service. To avoid such a scenario, we are storing our business-critical Web data in the most reliable, secure storage vault there is - EMC."
    Interstate Batteries is incorporating EMC TimeFinder(TM), PowerPath(TM), ControlCenter(TM), Navisphere(TM), and Access Logix(TM) software to build in even higher data availability in its E-Infostructure. For example, EMC software enables Interstate Batteries to perform back-ups, populate data warehouses, and refresh databases while the system is online and running.
    "NASCAR and the global market for information storage share similar characteristics," said Mike Ruffolo, EMC's Executive Vice President of Global Sales, Services and Marketing. "Both are growing at lightning speed, and reward comes to those who can simultaneously deliver excellence in speed and reliability. EMC has raced far ahead of its competitors by creating the world's most adaptive, available and high-performance infrastructure for generating info-driven value."
    EMC Corporation is the world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services, providing the information infrastructure for a connected world. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

    EMC and Symmetrix are registered trademarks and EMC E-Infostructure, CLARiiON, TimeFinder, PowerPath, ControlCenter, Navisphere, and Access Logix are trademarks of EMC Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.